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How Video Games Have Changed Over The Last 20 Years

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Video games have changed a lot over the past decades. During last 20 years the game industry continues to grow at a rapid pace. In DigiCapital's latest forecast report, the firm says the global video games market, which includes hardware, software, peripherals and components across the entire world, could reach as high as $170 billion in 2018. In many respects, VG has surpassed movies regarding gross income and popularity. The World of Warcraft franchise (1994 -present) has reportedly earned more than $10 billion for its developer, Blizzard Entertainment (Ervin, 2017). The open world game Grand Theft Auto V for example, made $800 million in sales on just the first day of its availability making another $200 million more over the next 48 hours (James Brightman, 2013). VGs have become so popular and pervasive that they are now considered to be a part of the mass media, an everyday method of storytelling and representation (Shapiro, 2014; Kondrat, 2015). Online games have become a second most popular online …show more content…

Originally, according to Dickerman et. Al. (2008), they were thought to be played mostly by teen males. This perception has changed. It is no longer the adolescent or teenage boy who is playing but women and adult population are playing games in greater numbers. Gamers age 18 or older represent 72 % of the video game-playing population, and the average gamer is 35 years old (ESA, 2017). BBC reports 59 percent of people between the ages 6 and 65 play some form of video game (Juul, 2010). 21 million people play games in the UK, about half of them are women and 27% of them are over the age of 44 (Sheikh, 2017). In the US and Western Europe, female gamers constitute 39 percent and 25 percent respectively of the total number of active players, in Japan 36 percent of players are women, and nearly 70 percent of all women have a game machine at home (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et. al,

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