[HN Gopher] Over three billion people worldwide now play video g...
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Over three billion people worldwide now play video games, study
reports
Author : Gamermeme
Score : 26 points
Date : 2020-08-21 21:50 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nintendosmash.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nintendosmash.com)
| jpxw wrote:
| If you count Candy Crush then sure
| ashtonkem wrote:
| And you should.
|
| "Casual" video gaming, a term that carries unfortunate
| dismissive undertones, represents the most common form of video
| games played. The proliferation of the smart phone has
| undoubtedly helped here.
|
| Probably more so pre-pandemic. My observation when I lived in
| Chicago is that many people played these games while commuting
| via mass transit, I'm sure fewer are doing that now.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Decades ago, people did crosswords or read the paper/books
| while commuting.
|
| Do see a bit of sudoku. It would be interesting if there are
| music vs audiobooks metrics on today's commuters. I get the
| commute escapism of candy crush but I've seen enough of that
| in homes/work to wonder.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Podcasts would also be quite big, I'd expect.
| superhuzza wrote:
| Why wouldn't you count Candy Crush? It seems like it would fall
| under any reasonable definition of video game.
| harimau777 wrote:
| I'd argue that ultra-casual games like Candy Crush have so
| little in common with "core games" that it's not particularly
| useful to consider them the same thing.
|
| A similar situation:
|
| If I was discussing "board game culture" I think that most
| people would recognize that I'm referring the culture
| associated with games like Catan or Pandemic as opposed to
| people casually playing Tic Tac Toe.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > If I was discussing "board game culture"
|
| No-one's talking about 'board game culture', though. This
| is about whether people play video games. If you were
| talking about the board games people play, Catan would be a
| barely visible blip; it'd be all about things like
| Monopoly. Now if you were talking about people who consider
| playing games part of their identity, I'd be inclined to
| agree (though there are edge cases; Pokemon Go falls into
| both 'casual game' and 'game that people get a bit weird
| about', for instance), but that's not at all what this
| survey is about.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Right. I have some activities that are _way_ more dubious
| than Candy Crush as to whether they are "video games".
|
| For example I played Love Letter on Board Game Arena on
| Tuesday. Clearly if I played the "real" Love Letter that
| isn't a video game, it's a card game. So maybe playing it on
| BGA is still a card game, except the cards don't exist and
| I'm on a web site?
|
| Sometimes on Tuesday I play Through The Ages. TTA was created
| as a board game, but obviously in the pandemic you can't
| safely go to somebody's house and sit around playing board
| games for hours. So there's a version that's a Steam game. Is
| _that_ a video game? Or is that still just a board game I 'm
| playing via Steam?
|
| Sometimes we play D&D online instead. Is _that_ a video game?
| Is it a video game if we 're doing a 4th edition combat
| encounter, so that exact positions and movement matter? How
| about if it's a roleplayed skill check scenario instead?
|
| Is an Infocom text adventure game a video game? How about a
| point-and-click like Monkey Island?
|
| Is _designing_ courses in Mario Maker 2 a video game?
|
| Is writing Python code for my Compact Claustrophobia
| (Minecraft modpack) robot to more efficiently construct
| things for my play a video game?
|
| These are things that require some clear fundamental idea of
| what video games are to guide principled decisions. Whereas
| Candy Crush is just obviously a video game.
|
| If Candy Crush isn't a video game then I'm pretty sure arcade
| Space Invaders wasn't a video game either.
| rsynnott wrote:
| This is such a weird attitude. If someone was to say (figures
| made up) "over two billion people worldwide now drink beer"
| then "if you count Budweiser then sure", would be a bizarre
| response. Candy Crush is clearly a game; this isn't really
| ambiguous. It's a mass market game that game connoisseurs sneer
| at, sure, but it's a game.
| jpxw wrote:
| I'm just saying that if you count anyone who has ever played
| Candy Crush, your stats aren't going to be particularly
| meaningful, and you'll end up with a number like "three
| billion".
|
| If the same number was cited for beer drinking, I'd be saying
| "sure, if you count anyone who's ever had a Budweiser", and
| it would be a valid criticism.
| rsynnott wrote:
| This would appear to be people who currently play games.
| prophesi wrote:
| I get what you're saying. It would be interesting to see
| the statistics on how many people play non-casual
| videogames. And how many people drink craft beer.
|
| Though with videogames, it's still a meaningful statistic
| to include "casuals" considering it used to be taboo to
| play videogames at all as an adult.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I know the comment I'm about to make isn't very substantive,
| but oh man is "gamer" gatekeeping prevalent.
| jpxw wrote:
| I'm not a gamer, so it doesn't make sense for me to be
| gatekeeping.
|
| Edit; although this study would probably call me one, because
| I picked up an Xbox controller one time.
| thefounder wrote:
| Looks like an addiction getting out of control.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The a only significant when you factor in time played and
| frequency.
| bjo590 wrote:
| > Analysts point out that almost half of the accounted three
| billion are those who play only on smartphones or mobile devices.
| This segment is also ahead of all others in terms of growth.
|
| This segment is incredibly lucrative for the winners. Niantic has
| an estimated revenue of 800 million dollars. Supercell's highest
| reported revenue was just over 2 billion euros. King sold to
| Activision Blizzard for 5.9 billion dollars in 2016. Epic is
| going to war with Google and Apple over Fornite money. There's
| Asian players that are also impressive, but I'm not familiar
| enough to speak on that market. These revenues and valuations are
| happening in a high growth market.
| stickydink wrote:
| That'll be Tencent, smartphone gaming revenue over $5bn USD in
| Q2 alone
|
| https://cdc-tencent-com-1258344706.image.myqcloud.com/upload...
| DobryMorozov wrote:
| Mobile legends does pretty well for Moonton and is extremely
| popular in southeast Asia
| op03 wrote:
| Anything good on Linux these days?
| solinent wrote:
| I'm playing Civ 6 pretty frequently. Cross-platform multiplayer
| as well!
| bjo590 wrote:
| https://store.steampowered.com/linux
|
| If a game is going to support Windows + macOS than it isn't
| much more work to also support Linux these days. There are many
| games released on Linux every year.
| glouwbug wrote:
| That's right, Proton is amazing. I've been playing classics
| like Rome Total War on my Linux setup
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