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| Topic | "No, I was born before video games were popular"...really? |
| Zeus 05/22/18 11:29:14 PM #37: | ParanoidObsessive posted... And to be fair, the arcade boom also died off fairly quickly in the early 80s. To be even more fair, it's not like the popularity just died. There had been rapid unsustainable growth early on and, although that collapsed, arcades were still very much a thing until maybe the 00s when they phased out of malls. Arcade culture really had multiple periods of popularity, thanks to various genre booms. ParanoidObsessive posted... That's the real problem - how do you define "when video games became popular"? The first time they became a fad? The first time a significant number of people owned home consoles? The first time it actually became somewhat acceptable for older teens and adults to play games regularly and not be treated like nerds or socially-immature weirdos? The first time video games started to have a regular and prolonged presence in pop culture? If you're being literal about it (ie, first time they became popular), then it should be the arcade boom. ParanoidObsessive posted... I know I was absolutely a hardcore gamer in the 80s, and I wouldn't even remotely have said that gaming was "popular" at the time. I certainly wouldn't have thought it was something trendy or "cool" to do. I'd almost be willing to argue that gaming "popularity" is something that didn't really happen until the PS2 era (once the average age of gamers started tipping towards adults and college gamers started proliferating), regardless of whether or not there were earlier boom periods. If you were to arbitrarily pick a mainstream point, it would have to be much later than the ps2, doubly so since consoles *still* have some amount of stigma attached to them (and PC gaming has a whole other set of stigmas attached) and it's a dedicated purchase. Honestly, other than arcades, it's really just been mobile that really brought gaming to the masses ParanoidObsessive posted... That being said, it's probably worth noting that when I was born, arcades weren't actually a thing and the Atari 2600 didn't exist (Pong did, but video games were niche as fuck back then in the pre-cartridge era). I thought you were 41 or 42? --- (\/)(\/)|-| There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist. ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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