Video Games are invading every aspect of our lives.

Video games have become a mainstream mainstay of entertainment for hundreds of thousands if not millions of avid fans and just so casual gamers. While it does not appeal to the older generations as much the newer generations are growing up with it being the only if not majority of their entertainment. Video games have evolved extremely through the ages as better computing power and more practical controllers are designed. From a mouse and keyboard to an Atari controller, gaming has not slowed down in development and the fleshing out into the market of young entertainment addicted generations. Video games are sometimes frowned upon by older generations because they did not grow up with them and fail to see a point. While as younger generations grow up in the age of technology and Video games and entertainment at the touch of a button have made video games their lives, not only as programmers or play testers and the people who flesh out the idea of the story or the people who design the enemies but as you-tubers or streamers or professional Gamers who participate in Esports. These people make their lives and livings of the idea and enjoyment of video games and the video game train of entertainment doesn’t seem to stop anytime soon. Sooner if not later video games will be accessed by almost everyone and there doesn’t seem to be any rush to stop it.

Videogames started simple and computers held a lot of innovation to develop the new style of entertainment. While at the beginning they were not widely available, many die hard video game fans will sometimes build their own computers for the sole purpose of video games. Although those Pc’s are sometimes thousands of dollars, many people can run games on simple laptops or semi outdated pc’s. Gaming has become so deeply ingrained to our computers that many of them come with pre-downloaded factory games. Such as Chess, checkers, solitaire and others, some even offer multiplayer with random people around the world or you can compete against AI. While these games are simple in nature and don’t seem to garner any attention, it goes to show that video games no matter how big or small or simple are ingrained into the things we use almost every day and it doesn’t seem to be stopping as online gaming, community building, and more are being encouraged. As these game communities are being developed there is more and more exposure to other people, such as ads while you are browsing just to bring the idea to your mind and ads are everywhere so video games are never really out of sight.

YouTube and Twitch are both major factors in keeping video games in the public eye. YouTube as a video hosting and sharing website that is ever growing in its exploits. It has a massive fan base and is used from tutorial videos to makeup to vlogs to, you guessed it, Video games. Video games are a massive boon to YouTube as it garners lots of viewers and subscriptions for the content creators. The number one subscribed to channel named PewDiePie has 49,350,445 subscribers and was once 100 percent gaming related videos. It shows that a charismatic person with video games can do great things. He has even gone on to make his own mobile game with his branding. He is a massive figure that has brought video games to millions of people in the form of entertainment. Video games and YouTube as a social site have gathered many millions of views as the younger people enjoy watching and the people who play will sometimes use video walk-through to help beat a game that they enjoy. Twitch is another website that gains millions of views but does it in a way that used to be unique until YouTube caught on. Twitch is a video streaming website that allows their content creators who can honestly be anyone who wants to stream video game content as much as possible live! Streaming these video games live allow people to interact with their viewers on a more personal scale. Twitch has game page that shows how many viewers a game has live at that moment with their featured games. Twitch also allows viewers the option of taking clips from the stream and uploading it to social media websites such as twitter and Facebook and that brings video games onto these platforms and gives video games a greater audience that will probably never stop expanding while there is interest.

Consoles are specifically designed for gaming and bring video games to a wider audience with ease as they are often cheaper and more readily available than Gaming Pc’s. consoles have been around from the start, an example of such is the Atari which was they first gaming console to be widely known having and iconic game named pong. This console was the start of the development of more consoles and eventually has brought us to what we have today as many millions of people own consoles like PlayStation 4 and Xbox 1’s and others like the Wii. These consoles and used by millions to ply video games and consoles have their own social media ingrained as you can make friends and voice chat while in games with your friends. These cheaper alternatives bring gaming to more people and soon become a mainstay in a household. These consoles will often get lots of media attention as they are released to bring in sales and in doing so propel gaming and the tools you us to participate in gaming to the masses that might not be playing games yet, but maybe soon.

Mobile apps are other way gaming fanatics are getting their pastime to the masses. While before many people didn’t have phones, in this day and age they are almost a guarantee. While people are out and about away from their gaming Pc’s or consoles, they utilize things called mobile apps and many people download mini video games to their phones and some have quite literally swept across the nation bringing video games into the eye of an entire country. One such as this was the highly controversial yet ridiculously simple Flappy bird which had to be removed from the mobile stores after catching heat. Flappy bird was brought to the eye of a nation by the stunning simplicity of the game, don’t touch the pipe. This simplicity and time wasting factor got it millions of downloads. Although simple, this game was in its entirety was difficult. One had to tap to fly but you always seemed to hit a pipe. It became a national competition to see how many you could get past. After a while these competitions turned violent and lead to its removal from the mobile store. Although it was removed it brought many people the idea of mobile games and now its commonplace to have a few games on your phone for you or your kids. While it is becoming commonplace, other mobile apps such as Candy Crush have taken over the public eye and is still seen all over the place as apps or ads and other things.

Gaming Fanatics might be seeing their favorite pastime on television more often. A very popular Esports game called Counterstrike: global offensive broadcasted its tournament to TBS. Counterstrike global offensive or cs: go as many refer to it is a 5v5 first person shooter game where the object is to win a majority of 30 2 minute rounds by elimination of the other team or successfully defusing or detonating a bomb. This showing of the tournament on tbs gathered a sizable chunk of attention on TBS but was more of a step in the right direction. While it wasn’t a major hit, it gained enough attention that TBS are hosting more Esport games in the hopes of gathering more interest.

Another way video games seem to be popping up everywhere is that it’s now very popular even for just casual gamers to talk about, reference, and wear/ show off the games they play. Videogames since there creation have always been a part of our culture even if that part was small. In this day and age as we have children who are growing up with video games it has become a topic more people can talk about, understand references from and show off proudly as gaming communities exist outside of the games themselves. Many ways gamers can see their communities is through meetups and conventions as well as clothing giving reference to a game or character. Conventions such as Minecon for Minecraft players, E3 for video game fanatics in general where stuff is released and teased. And comicon where people dress up as their favorite comic book or videogame character and strut their stuff with likeminded people. Many people who are just casual gamers will often have some type of shirt or coat or clothing with a reference to a game they play and show their support and spread video games ever farther into modern culture.

Virtual reality is another way videogames might be moving their way into our daily life as many companies are trying to make their own. Oculus, PlayStation and even Samsung are venturing into this. While it’s still in small doses because of the price as it becomes cheaper it will become more widespread and maybe eventually become commonplace. Virtual reality has different types of uses. It puts you in places you want to be and lets you see things. Steam VR is designed to let you play video games and has simulation games such as office jobs, cleaning cars, tennis, and other simple creative ones that let you draw your own world. In enough time these will become commonplace.

credit for images/videos: GIPHY & YouTube.