Online gaming has also done a great number of things for gaming economy. A recent story on Business Week Online clearly illustrates the growth that online gaming has experienced since 2001 as a source of revenue, and projects this profit to more than triple by 2011. Distributors, I’m sure, are salivating.
But are all of the boons of online gaming worth it, and are all of those boons really as attractive as they sound? I don’t think so. I think that online gaming is stripping away old-school console gaming culture and making it less about community and more about competition. With more and more gamers going online, arcades are slowly dying out. And remember those late night Goldeneye parties? They may one day be no more.
Anybody who watched the Oscars on March 5 th knows how concerned the entire movie industry is over booming DVD sales. More people are buying and renting DVDs and less people are going to theaters. The reasons behind this are economical. It’s much more cost-efficient to buy one DVD for $20 and keep it forever than to load up the kids and take them to see a movie for seven bucks a head—once. Likewise, cash-stripped college students (and cash-stripped recent college graduates such as the author of this article) would much rather get together with their friends and go in a dollar each for a DVD rental than pay for a movie ticket. Not to mention you can watch movies at home in your pajamas while eating macaroni and cheese straight out the pot.
While I’m not exactly on the side of the Hollywood elite on this one, I have to say I see their point. There is something magical about a darkened theater and booming sound, about the event of going to a movie on opening weekend and being part of the crowd. And I see a similar phenomenon happening in gaming. Lured by the boons of online gaming, gamers are forsaking the magic that video games used to be in favor of quick and easy satisfaction.
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