How do people get culture? Is it news? TV? Conversation? Maybe video games play a role. While preparing for class this week I stumbled across some interesting numbers. The American newspaper industry is a 34 Billion dollar industry circa 2011. The American video game industry was a 21 Billion dollar industry in 2008. Globally, video games generated about 49 billion that year. in 2012 they generated 74 billion.
It seems that the video game industry may generate more cash than the newspaper industry, which is to say that games reach more people than papers and they do so more often. Games are invasive. They’re on your phone, in your paper, and on TV. So it is fair to assume that games have more contact with people than newspapers. I surmise from this information that games have more impact on people than newspapers.
What does this mean from a social perspective? Clearly our Internet lives influence us more than papers, but in the hierarchy of things it was nice to believe that Newspapers trumped Sonic the Hedgehog. This is no longer the case, which means reality is also no longer the case. I wonder how that will shape our next generation?