10 Things Non-Gamers Don't Understand About Gaming
The "magic" pause button ain't so magic.
Though video games are the most lucrative form of entertainment media in the world - with annual revenue now more than movies and music combined - there are still a great many who simply have no interest in picking up a controller.
It's tough for gamers to even think about, but on the other side of the fence there are those who simply don't "get" the appeal of gaming, and therefore possess no knowledge of how the industry operates or how players engage with the medium.
And that's not a knock against non-gamers, of course, simply that their interests lie elsewhere, while gamers will naturally take the core tenets of the industry for absolute granted.
And so, from the cutting edge mechanics of modern games to the biggest issues facing the industry today, the immersive potential of the medium, and everything in-between, these are the highs and the lows of video games that non-gamers simply won't understand.
The next time you're tempted to scoff at the ignorance of your non-gaming pal, consider how totally not-obvious all of this is to the lay-person...
10. Modern Video Games Are "Alive"
Though non-gamers can obviously appreciate that video games are an interactive medium, many don't understand quite how the relationship between player and game can unfold in our ever-evolving present.
The very nature of gaming in 2020 means that, rather than players dig into a game with a finite end-point, more titles than ever are constantly transforming as part of the current boom in "live service" business models.
In recent years, games such as Destiny, The Divsion, Fortnite, and so on have flourished on the promises of their fluidity, where new content is constantly delivered to players to ensure the experience is never static or, dare one say, "finished."
The obvious incentive is to keep players coming back day after day through sheer force of habit, and as a result games are kept "alive" by the participation and investment of their community (namely through buying in-game cosmetics and items).
As such, live service games can also "die" if their community abandons them, a prospect which might be especially tough for non-gamers to wrap their heads around.
Indeed, paying your upfront fee to play a game is no guarantee that you'll be able to play it in perpetuity, as was perhaps most brutally proven by Gearbox's online FPS Battleborn, which was destroyed by Overwatch in the weeks following its release and is effectively now dead.
Though the AAA single-player game once reigned supreme, singular, finite gaming experiences are become increasingly uncommon these days, because that just isn't where the big microtransaction bucks are.