What changed in the 2010s: how we look at gamers

All that time in front of the screen may be paying off.

The 2010s saw the integration of technology into our lives like never before. If you think that can be said about every decade that came before, think about this: tech has changed the way we think about the people who make it. It used to be that programmers were thought of simply as “geeks” or “nerds” that were not desirable to emulate or socialize with due to a perceived, inherent “uncoolness”. Today, tech knowledge is fashionable, and the greatest minds in the game are now some of the most prominent public figures we have, like Elon Musk. But what of the gamer?

When video games first exploded in the 1980s, they were viewed as a pastime that, like television, would rot the brains of children and turn them into zombies. For a long period of time, television was not a particularly high-brow form of entertainment; shows had lower budgets than movies and appealed to base emotions and preferences, with extended periods of watching (what we’d call “binging” today) being the domain of “couch potatoes”. Yet in the decade prior television had a renaissance, with creators coming up with increasingly complex plots and characters, first on pay channels like HBO before spreading to basic cable and driving the growth of the streaming industry into the behemoth it is today. And to be a fan of certain series is to carry a mark of distinction.

Being that television was so mediocre for so long when video games appeared, it is understandable that another screen-based form of entertainment would garner similar lamenting responses. As such, people were so seriously worried about the detriments of gaming that any potential benefits were stifled. We’ve talked about them here in The Handelot Times - game developers are including more and more opportunities for physical activity to complement multisensory audiovisual experiences. And gamers who play them are getting so much more out of the gaming experience than their predecessors.