Gaming is entering the mainstream of society
Sounds like a politician’s cliché, but you can check it at any time when you stroll through the city center: Gaming is much more present in public than before.
This is partly a demographic trend – older people who have nothing to do with gaming and only play cards will become fewer – instead, there are more people who played in their youth or still play.
A trend that can be observed more strongly every year.
TV series like “The Big Bang Theory” feature gamers as protagonists – even in TV shows for the older generation, there is at least one gamer in such a funny supporting role: the tech nerd.
Mobile gaming brings gaming into the public
What helps this trend is mobile gaming. People are not sitting at home playing in the basement like with an electric train, where no one can see. Instead, they are out and about with the Switch or smartphone among people.
Some gamers may wrinkle their noses at this, but mobile gaming and casual gaming are helping to bring gaming out of niche status.
The Pokémon GO boom in 2016 probably confronted more people with gaming as a phenomenon than a blockbuster game that was played in tens of thousands of living rooms.
If you’re at a birthday party and look at your relatives’ kids: How many of them are tapping away on their smartphones, tending to some virtual farm?
Gaming will enter society even more strongly in 2018 – the question is whether these games are the type of gaming that suits everyone. Admittedly, some smartphone gaming feels a bit like “checking emails.”
Maybe one should talk to their younger siblings (or their own parents) and try to show them that there are also other games besides casual games. But there is hope: In mobile gaming, games are coming in 2018 and will become popular, which also “real gamers” say: “That’s okay for me,” without breaking a sweat off their gamer crown.
Especially the Nintendo Switch could sustainably change the market here, as long as we keep up with broadband expansion in Germany.
