Every end of the year there is a particularly revealing moment in the world of video games, which is that of the rankings of the most played titles on the various platforms. This is the classic reality check that says a lot, but teaches little and which is forgotten within a few days. After another 365 days spent talking about this or that exclusive, for platform consumption of video games in the PlayStation world (PS4 and PS5), tells us for the umpteenth time that the average gamer it's like old ladies watching Amadeus: habitual and not very curious. Maybe she spends hundreds of euros to decorate the bedroom and show herself on streaming (or imitate those who do it), but at the end of the show she always plays the same games and doesn't look around much. The various Fortnite, Call of Duty, GTA, FIFA and little else are enough for him to feel integrated and to be able to define himself as a “gamer”, a word that has now become a mere product category, a bit like the “nerd” one.
Mass and power
The average gamer doesn't care about video games as a medium. He doesn't care about their history or their evolution. He is not interested in discovering the ideas emerging from the independent scene or following the progress of studies or individual authors, even the most established ones. What involves him are the phenomena, those that allow him to feel part of a masswithin which to disperse.
Elias Canetti wrote in Mass and Power: “Only all together can men free themselves from their distances. This is precisely what happens in the mass. In the discharge the divisions are thrown and everyone feels equal. In that density, in which the bodies crowd together and between them there is almost no is space, each is close to the other as to himself. The relief that derives from it is enormous. It is by virtue of this moment of happiness, in which no one is more, no one is better than another, that men become mass.”
Evidently, gamers participate in the same processes that regulate the rest of the human race (there was no doubt about it, but for some time we naively hoped that it wasn't the case). After all, how much enjoyment is manifested when the sales or involvement data of a particular game show its success, i.e. the growth of the masses who enjoy it, therefore the reduction in the risk of it disintegrating? “Only the increase in mass prevents its members from crawling again under the weight of their private burdens,” and from having to change the channel… sorry, game, we add.
Yet, despite everything, every year there is amazement. Every year those data that should immediately make it clear why certain market trends and certain risky choices made by the biggest publishers (think of Sony's pursuit of live services) are commented on as if they were incredible and unexpected, only to be ignored the next day, as if the fate of consoles and videogame ecosystems were truly determined again from classic games and not from something we refuse to look in the eye; a world of video games that may not belong to us, but which has nevertheless marginalized us, because that's where the money is made and that's where the new generations are going.
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