Games are interactive, movies are passive. Makes sense to me.
And there are some games which are basically interactive movies, e.g. Last of Us and Life is Strange
I’d still rather play video games than watch a movie, and I’m in my 40s.
I’m a millennial but same.
Movies suck ass right now. And honestly videogames too.
Videogames have replay value though so I can stick to the good ones from the past.
Movies have rewatch value up to a point.
Make a movie we want to see and we’ll watch it.
A lot of AAA games may suck right now but there’s so many awesome indie games that it’s hard to care.
To me it’s even simpler than that. Games are by design more engaging than movies, so I chose to play games.
About to turn 51. Same.
I mean, games are like interactive movies now. RDR2? Cyberpunk 2077? They’re great fiction and you get to be the main character. I was never a gamer, I would play here and there but could never play more than like an hour a day. Now? Especially the two games I mentioned, it blew my mind how much I could play those games. They’re excellent pieces of media.
Have you tried kingdom come deliverance?
Hell yeah. And we get to shape our own stories this way. Game writing is different than movie writing. We get to express values.
I love video games but I also really love film. I went from playing Silent Hill games to watching films like Jacob’s Ladder, Lost Highway, and Session 9. I’ve been watching a lot more films lately. David Lynch is one of my favorite filmmakers right now. I guess most of my life I was watching the wrong films. Even today lots of great films are still being made, you just need to wade through lots of shit to find it. For every great film, there’s probably 10 shitty cash grabs. Cough, cough Minecraft Movie.
Can confirm. They just leave the room. Even if they are half way in.
It will change, believe me. I have less and less energy to play video games each year.
Not all video games are twitch shooters.
I’m almost 60 and I play almost every day.
I wonder if this might be related to the idea that modern media consumption habits are potentially trashing people’s attention spans
No, it is just human nature to want to do things they find more engaging. For most people games are more engaging than movies which are more engaging that books. Younger people are just more likely to have experience with all three.
I’m not sure it can just be that though, millennials have experience of all three too, why does the trend apparently exclude them?
I will sometimes pick a game, sometimes a movie, sometimes a book—all can be equally engaging IMO
The article doesn’t mention Millennials at all, but the video game market jumped over the box office before Gen Z was old enough to play games.
Gaming was more popular and more accessible when Gen Z was growing up, so probably more of them developed a preference for it.
Even when I watch something there is a game open in my hands or on another screen.
Millennials grew up with some pretty awesome movies. Gen Z and Alpha grew up with some pretty awesome video games. Makes sense.
Gen X grew up with awesome movies and games…
Damn right. And music.
We had good original games growing up, but modern games are designed to be meth-adjacent levels of fun for kids.
