Movies
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I wonder if this might be related to the idea that modern media consumption habits are potentially trashing people's attention spans
No, it is just human nature to want to do things they find more engaging. For most people games are more engaging than movies which are more engaging that books. Younger people are just more likely to have experience with all three.
I'm not sure it can just be that though, millennials have experience of all three too, why does the trend apparently exclude them?
I will sometimes pick a game, sometimes a movie, sometimes a book—all can be equally engaging IMO
Took way too long to find it in the actual report (page 12 of https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Essential-Facts-2024-FINAL.pdf)) but it is 63% Gen Z, 55% Millenials, 33% GenX, and 14% Boomers. Nothing is being "excluded".
And the trend makes sense. GenX and older Millenials were the tipping point where games went from "for losers" to "for everyone". But also? GenX and Millenials have families and careers. Playing a game gets a lot more difficult when you have kids swarming around whereas putting on a movie is something the whole family can enjoy. Same with just not wanting to touch a computer "of any form" (and ignoring that your streaming box is also a computer...) after a long day of work.
Gaming was more popular and more accessible when Gen Z was growing up, so probably more of them developed a preference for it.
The article doesn't mention Millennials at all, but the video game market jumped over the box office before Gen Z was old enough to play games.
Yeah. Its immediate gratification.
You can get into a cod or fortnite game in less than five minutes from boot to boots on the ground. You can get into a fight in an open world game in even less time. And so forth.
If you aren't into the (delightful) love story? The (extended cut) Fall Guy is 20 minutes to the first stunt and about 45 minutes to the first fight scene. Personally? I think the movie would have benefited from even more time with Ryan Gosling just crying to some t swizzle in the car but it (like Drive, another spectacular Gosling film that nobody but me likes) was marketed as an action movie and people are going to just take out their phones or their gameboys if you make them wait that long.
Its similar logic to "I don't have time to watch a 90 minute movie tonight. So instead I'll watch six episodes of a tv show"
On the flip side many people put 100+ hours into a single game and a movie lasts maybe 2. Games can have delayed gratification too.
I think instant engagement is a better description than instant gratification. Some books, movies, and games can pull off quick engagment but a lot have a gradual buildup as well. A gradual buildup with audio, visual, and active participation is just easier to become engaged quickly.
Some games do have rapid engagement on subsequent plays like you mentioned, although I would say COD has a pretty slow engagement for me when it starts up after an update and makes me watch those short background clips I don't care about. Much slower than the cold open on good comedy shows or the opening scene of Jurrasic Park.