Video games have been surging in the past few years in terms of both money spent on them and time devoted to playing them. The phenomenon is interesting on several levels. It's beginning to both shape and replace more traditional forms of human interaction. Balk all you will but World of Warcraft is a group dynamics psych experiment with the biggest sample size ever. Plus it generated over a billion dollars in revenue in one year for its producer Blizzard (that's a 1000 millions). At the rate we're going we'll have a sizable chunk of our population who take the blue pill and lives largely in a built reality - It's already happening in multiple MMORPG's (massive multiplayer online role playing games). I've neglected to share a few articles in the past but this one is worth mentioning.
This is from Milo:
Call of Duty: Black Ops made $650 million in the first week it was out. It was by far the largest media release ever. By comparison The Dark Knight made $200 million its first week.
I find it more interesting than creepy. Game producers are becoming increasingly good at hooking gamers by teasing them with well timed upgrades and rewards. Your weapons and characters get better as you play - making playing more fun. What's interesting is that people seem to clearly prefer this as opposed to rewards they receive in the real world, if I can call it that. A game provides a certain framework and security that the world cannot. Perhaps social scientists, governments, and employers should take note and learn from game producers.
No comments:
Post a Comment