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As a part of some research I am doing I am trying to get a clear idea of how popular video games as a form of entertainment was over the years.

I was born in 91 and like everyone else the furthest back I can remember is when I was 4 years old around 1995. Growing up in the mid to late 90s I felt as if the only friend I had that shared the same interest in video games was my oldest brother. I'd mention games like "Legend Of Legia", "Gex", "Crash Bandicoot", or even Mega Man X on the playstation and all of my friends at school would have no idea what the hell I was talking about. "You ever heard of Super Metroid?" "No." "Super Castlevania?" "Super What?" "Star Fox?" "You mean Star Wars?"

It was frustrating as a kid because I felt my biggest hobby was shrouded in obscurity. Talking about video games back then made you a "loser", but in today's world everyone is talking about how awesome they are in Call of Duty. I feel that video games became extremely popular around PS2's mid life in the early 2000s and Halo 2 with the advent of online console gaming. I remember when Xbox Live became big and I was not catching on to the excitement because I had already been playing online for years in games such as Unreal Tournament and Diablo on the PC.

So what would you say was the time when Video Games became as popular and talked about as they are today?

I would probasbly say Halo; CE is when they became the most "Mainstream", myself.

True, and this may be due to the fact that before then FPS games were mainly restricted to the PC.

The launch of xbox and then the coming of xbox 360, ps3 and high end PC's marked the launch of gaming into the significant entertainment realm. Our generation literally grew up as gaming did.

If you want a more empirical measure I would recommend digging up sales statistics (per unit, or in actual currency) for popular games in each year, and then compare them to the sales totals for things like music and movies (piracy shouldn't be an issue, as all of these are pirated).

You might also note when video game commercials first started appearing on broadcast television,


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DickBandit wrote:Growing up in the mid to late 90s I felt as if the only friend I had that shared the same interest in video games was my oldest brother.

I know this pain, though I'm an only child. A lot of the hobbies I developed outside electronic gaming were means of socialization which my parents forced on me.

In any case, by the mid-90's gaming was first starting to be seen as normal. Back in my day (I'm not that old, but I love that phrase) if you had an NES you were a nerd, God forbid a 386. Hell, I remember being mocked for playing games on Prodigy.

Having played all the way back since the K-Mart pong machine the trend toward mainstream started in the PlayStation era, one reason why FFVII is so popular, and reached critical mass around Halo. Though the truth is that Madden probably had the biggest impact on getting non-gamers into playing.

I would have to say around the PS1 was where gaming was more acceptable in modern society, consoles were easier to get a hold of i think(i was pretty young at this stage).

I would have to say the biggest increase would probly be the PS2 and Xbox area mainly because Halo was such a big hit and alot of the games we see now are based on games from that era.

I dunno, I think video game systems have always been a mainstream thing. The difference is nowadays they all have budgets that rival hollywood movies. I always felt computer gaming has always been thought of as generally more "nerdy", and consoles are for the normal folks out there.

I grew up with an Atari 2600, and I remember being pissy that my friend had a Colecovision and the graphics on that were just like the arcade. But you'd see people playing Atari on TV shows like Three's Company.. I remember at least seeing a system on top of their TV in a few episodes back in the day. And I remember seeing all kinds of commercials for the original Nintendo system too, just like we have commercials for all the big games these days.

Necros wrote:And I remember seeing all kinds of commercials for the original Nintendo system too, just like we have commercials for all the big games these days.

My childhood. Lords I loved my NES ;_;

I would say each year Video Games are more popular and mainstream than the last.

DickBandit wrote:So what would you say was the time when Video Games became as popular and talked about as they are today?

The problem is your question is badly formed. The answer is today. And then right now. And now. And then now. The video game industry in terms of popularity as an entertainment source is growing every second still. So your question can only be answered with the immediate time of now. If you are looking for certain events in time that brought video games to the for front of mass media entertainment then that is something completely different (and some people above have stated a couple of good events that did this.)

As a veteren in the gaming industry I can say that video games as a source of entertainment has never been as popular as it is today. Nor has it spread as wide an age gap as it does today. Its not uncommon to find out that you are playing your favorite online game with a person between the ages of 6 to 60 years old today. That was something that would have been extremely rare over 10-15 years ago. Basically I recommend that you reword your question so that we can help you better. Because as it stands its a weak disscussion point in my view.


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For example some major milestones that have propelled the gaming industry to its current popularity are as follows:

- Console Age (No longer needed an expensive computer to play games. Opened a lot of doors to new gamers and spread to their friends and family.)
- Internet Age (Online gaming, gaming became a sport, broke down boarders across the world, widened the age gap of your teammates and enemies.)
- Advent of Social Gaming (Thanks to facebook, ect. Huge increase in female 25-45 demografic and bored socialites.)
- Mobile Gaming Surge (iPad, iPhone, etc. created a huge boom in mobile gaming and opened the door to new audiences with lower price points and different demographics.)
- Motion Controls (A natural and simple way to interface with video games. Opened doors to new audiances of non-gamers and fitness freaks who weren't concerned with game quality per say.)

For the Future:
- Cloud Gaming (You no longer need a particular device/console/computer to play games. Means anyone with internet and an account can play from anywhere on anything)

Ahtman wrote: Though the truth is that Madden probably had the biggest impact on getting non-gamers into playing.

This.

Also, NBA JAM in both its arcade and home formats.

The Atari 2600 was huge, but imploded in on itself.

People proclaimed game consoles were dead, Computer gaming was the future.

Nintendo releases the NES. Console gaming was massive in the 80s with the NES. Sports games were big on that platform, and everyone loved the platformers and shooters there. Super Mario Bros was a huge phenomenon.

With the 16 bit generation, SEGA practically took the 3rd party sports games, which was huge as they are a big seller. They both focus now more on the 'teen boy' market rather than children/adults. Nintendo stay ahead with a 2D platformer (Donkey Kong Country).

SEGA then make some bad decisions with the Saturn.

With the Playstation and N64, Nintendo don't release a 2D Mario game so they go into decline. Playstation is released internationally where people with less access have it now (it isn't mainstream in the same way the NES was, if you look at where it was sold in comparison and with population).

The PS2, GC and X-Box era is pretty much a continuation of the previous era. Not much to say here.


Overall, in terms of games, your biggest hits of all time are:

WiiSports
Super Mario Bros
Pokemon Red/Green/Blue
Tetris
Duck Hunt (!)

Note that 3/5 were in the 80s on the NES, with a smaller population base (smaller population, sold in less regions than modern consoles). I think the 2600 had an even smaller base to sell to and was sort of a trailblazer, which is why you don't see too many here.

Daba wrote:
Overall, in terms of games, your biggest hits of all time are:

WiiSports
Super Mario Bros
Pokemon Red/Green/Blue
Tetris
Duck Hunt (!)

You must take into account however that the titles that shipped with a console. Which in my mind shouldn't be placed in the same list as best selling games of all time.

Wii Sports (Wii – 76.76 million,[70] packaged with system in all regions except Japan)
Super Mario Bros. (NES – 40.24 million)[43][44]
Tetris (Game Boy – 35 million)[78]
Super Mario World (SNES – 20.60 million)[52][44]

Which as you can see immediately removes four (since duck hunt was sold on a dual cartridge with Super Mario Bros on the NES) from your list of biggest hits. Everyone was forced to own a copy of these games in order to get the console in most cases.

And either way you missed the actual best seller and most popular game (which is from the mobile games industry):

Angry Birds (140 million)

But of course looking at raw sales numbers are always misleading as what is usually more important is the sales vs system install base. Angry birds can be played on a ton of systems from cell phones, to ipods/ipads, to computers. Giving it a huge install base to sell too and hence a better chance at selling the most games. Basically big sellers are not in it of themselves representitive of big break throughs in acceptance of video games as the most accepted form of entertainment (what the the OP was asking about) but rather the accessability of a game to the general gaming public and how much they liked it. What we should be pointing out is things that caused non-gamers to go out and purchase a system/computer/device that could play games and then followed through and got hooked on playing games. The advant of mobile gaming on cell phones (which everyone was buying anywas) for example. This opened the doors to a huge new user base simply from the fact that a ton of people where buying cell phones and then found themselves sitting with nothing to do and so they started playing games on it and got hooked/began to purchase more.

DickBandit wrote: As a part of some research I am doing I am trying to get a clear idea of how popular video games as a form of entertainment was over the years.

I was born in 91 and like everyone else the furthest back I can remember is when I was 4 years old around 1995. Growing up in the mid to late 90s I felt as if the only friend I had that shared the same interest in video games was my oldest brother. I'd mention games like "Legend Of Legia", "Gex", "Crash Bandicoot", or even Mega Man X on the playstation and all of my friends at school would have no idea what the hell I was talking about. "You ever heard of Super Metroid?" "No." "Super Castlevania?" "Super What?" "Star Fox?" "You mean Star Wars?"

It was frustrating as a kid because I felt my biggest hobby was shrouded in obscurity. Talking about video games back then made you a "loser", but in today's world everyone is talking about how awesome they are in Call of Duty. I feel that video games became extremely popular around PS2's mid life in the early 2000s and Halo 2 with the advent of online console gaming. I remember when Xbox Live became big and I was not catching on to the excitement because I had already been playing online for years in games such as Unreal Tournament and Diablo on the PC.

So what would you say was the time when Video Games became as popular and talked about as they are today?

Great post. Sums up a lot of my feelings toward videogames. To be honest I miss when playing online videogames made me a big nerd and pc games were a niche market. Now everyone person above the age of 5 has a ps3 or xbox with ethernet. No one developes for PCs anymore, casual average games are made for casual average gamers. Mostly the reason why I quit nearly all PC games and returned to wargaming. /elitisttearsoff

PS: I love hearing these post 2005 "gamers" talk about the next DLC they're gonna buy. Back in the day they were called mods and custom maps. The community produced them for free and out of love of the game. Now to get a map editor in a game you would have to call in a bomb threat or have a mouth like Sasha Grey.

Strimen wrote:

Daba wrote:
Overall, in terms of games, your biggest hits of all time are:

WiiSports
Super Mario Bros
Pokemon Red/Green/Blue
Tetris
Duck Hunt (!)

You must take into account however that the titles that shipped with a console. Which in my mind shouldn't be placed in the same list as best selling games of all time.

Wii Sports (Wii – 76.76 million,[70] packaged with system in all regions except Japan)
Super Mario Bros. (NES – 40.24 million)[43][44]
Tetris (Game Boy – 35 million)[78]
Super Mario World (SNES – 20.60 million)[52][44]

Which as you can see immediately removes four (since duck hunt was sold on a dual cartridge with Super Mario Bros on the NES) from your list of biggest hits. Everyone was forced to own a copy of these games in order to get the console in most cases.

And either way you missed the actual best seller and most popular game (which is from the mobile games industry):

Angry Birds (140 million)

But of course looking at raw sales numbers are always misleading as what is usually more important is the sales vs system install base. Angry birds can be played on a ton of systems from cell phones, to ipods/ipads, to computers. Giving it a huge install base to sell too and hence a better chance at selling the most games. Basically big sellers are not in it of themselves representitive of big break throughs in acceptance of video games as the most accepted form of entertainment (what the the OP was asking about) but rather the accessability of a game to the general gaming public and how much they liked it. What we should be pointing out is things that caused non-gamers to go out and purchase a system/computer/device that could play games and then followed through and got hooked on playing games. The advant of mobile gaming on cell phones (which everyone was buying anywas) for example. This opened the doors to a huge new user base simply from the fact that a ton of people where buying cell phones and then found themselves sitting with nothing to do and so they started playing games on it and got hooked/began to purchase more.

Angry Birds' interfaces is best on the touch screen, which is why it's so successful there. Also, the designs are quite well permeated to culture; but I can't think of any other Cellphone game that is like this or even close. There's very little 'investment' in it compared to a game on a dedicated system though; the game costs less than a chocolate bar or bottle of water in most countries where it's sold.

In terms of culture and household names, Mario is the highest and nothing introduced in the Playstation onwards era is even close.

Pokemon, then dismissed as a 'fad' is still big today; the games are top sellers and the spin-offs are still going on.

Exluding the 'bundled' games we have then:

Pokemon
Wii Play (with a bundled controller, does it count?)
Mario Kart Wii.
New Super Mario Bros DS
Nintendogs
Pokemon Gold/Silver (another Pokemon game)
Wii Fit
Mario Kart DS
New Super Mario Bros Wii


Compare where Wii Fit is a massive investment, costing 100 times the amount Angry Birds does. It's something users have actually integrated into their lives.

Oh its a well known fact that the one thing Nintendo does well is branding and then using the brand to sell even more stuff. The other thing is that they focus on actual game mechanics that are accessible in order to make their games fun while at the same time shying away from hardcore mechanics, deep "cinematic" stories and characters, awe inspiring graphics, etc...

That is the reason I feel Nintendo constantly creates top selling games. A combination of iconic branding and a focus on accessible game mechanics.


But again not really what the OP was looking for in terms of replys.

Strimen wrote:Oh its a well known fact that the one thing Nintendo does well is branding and then using the brand to sell even more stuff. The other thing is that they focus on actual game mechanics that are accessible in order to make their games fun while at the same time shying away from hardcore mechanics, deep "cinematic" stories and characters, awe inspiring graphics, etc...

That is the reason I feel Nintendo constantly creates top selling games. A combination of iconic branding and a focus on accessible game mechanics.


But again not really what the OP was looking for in terms of replys.

Well in specific it addresses this:

So what would you say was the time when Video Games became as popular and talked about as they are today?

The time they became popular was 1977 first, and then 1983. Compared to now, Video Games were a bigger phenomenon.

I'm older than the OP, and when I was in school Video Games were talked about quite often; at the time SEGA was the 'cool' one with famous people like Michael Jackson appearing in a Sonic book and thins like that. Sports games were always popular with lots of crowds. It was better before that, with the 9-bit era as game studios were making games for everyone.

In contrast, I actually think the 'Playstation Era' was the one that made gaming dorky, and stereotyped to the realm of isolated guys playing ultra-violent games.

PC games aren't developed for computers, a game developer developes for consoles and makes a PC game, the PC is then developed so you can play the game.

When I was young we had a NES, and then an SNES, and then a Nintendo 64. After that we had a PS2 and then a PS3.

As far as handhelds go my brother and I shared a gameboy until a year after gameboy color came out. We then got SP's a month or so before the DS came out and I got a DS after trading in my SP(best buy had poorly worded their warranty policy when selling the consoles and so a lot of people got DS's for $30 or so after trading in the SP).

The NES had fun games like Kirby, Duck Hunt, Blades of Steel, and the Mario games. SNES had Mario Kart, a mario game collection, Metal Marines, Super Combat, Fire Power 2000, and of course the cartridge that let you play Gameboy games on the TV. N64 had Mario 64, Quarterback Club(which was out before Madden and was a precursor to the Madden series mind you), the Army Men games, 007 Goldeneye, and the rest that I still have.

Playstation 1 was something I wanted but we never got, the PS2 we got because my brother and I each paid $100 for it with our parents footing the rest of the $100 for it when it first came out. I got the PS2 slim with my own money when that was $120. Good times.

It was when the PS1 was put into Ministry of Sound in 1996. People were dancing, doing E and playing WipEout. That was when videogaming came out of the bedroom and into the clubs.

halonachos wrote:PC games aren't developed for computers, a game developer developes for consoles and makes a PC game, the PC is then developed so you can play the game.

When I was young we had a NES, and then an SNES, and then a Nintendo 64. After that we had a PS2 and then a PS3.

As far as handhelds go my brother and I shared a gameboy until a year after gameboy color came out. We then got SP's a month or so before the DS came out and I got a DS after trading in my SP(best buy had poorly worded their warranty policy when selling the consoles and so a lot of people got DS's for $30 or so after trading in the SP).

The NES had fun games like Kirby, Duck Hunt, Blades of Steel, and the Mario games. SNES had Mario Kart, a mario game collection, Metal Marines, Super Combat, Fire Power 2000, and of course the cartridge that let you play Gameboy games on the TV. N64 had Mario 64, Quarterback Club(which was out before Madden and was a precursor to the Madden series mind you), the Army Men games, 007 Goldeneye, and the rest that I still have.

Playstation 1 was something I wanted but we never got, the PS2 we got because my brother and I each paid $100 for it with our parents footing the rest of the $100 for it when it first came out. I got the PS2 slim with my own money when that was $120. Good times.

You can play PS1 games on the PS2 as long as you have a PS1 memory card.

Movac wrote:

Great post. Sums up a lot of my feelings toward videogames. To be honest I miss when playing online videogames made me a big nerd and pc games were a niche market. Now everyone person above the age of 5 has a ps3 or xbox with ethernet. No one developes for PCs anymore, casual average games are made for casual average gamers. Mostly the reason why I quit nearly all PC games and returned to wargaming. /elitisttearsoff

PS: I love hearing these post 2005 "gamers" talk about the next DLC they're gonna buy. Back in the day they were called mods and custom maps. The community produced them for free and out of love of the game. Now to get a map editor in a game you would have to call in a bomb threat or have a mouth like Sasha Grey.

That's a good point. I remember some years ago playing the Warcraft 3 Mod for Day of Defeat. It was INSANE!!!! So much fun. Whenever you spawned a small menu would appear asking what race you want to play as. Each race had it's own perks. I picked the zombie race because for whatever reason you would explode when you died. And yes this was DAY OF DEFEAT SOURCE, a freakin' WWII FPS mod for Half Life. This wasn't some stupid DLC developers released for $20, it was someone who wanted to make a good game even better and created this fun little server with special rules. That's what I miss. EVERYTHING now a days is about milking a game/franchise as much as possible.

Movac wrote:

Great post. Sums up a lot of my feelings toward videogames. To be honest I miss when playing online videogames made me a big nerd and pc games were a niche market. Now everyone person above the age of 5 has a ps3 or xbox with ethernet. No one developes for PCs anymore, casual average games are made for casual average gamers. Mostly the reason why I quit nearly all PC games and returned to wargaming. /elitisttearsoff

PS: I love hearing these post 2005 "gamers" talk about the next DLC they're gonna buy. Back in the day they were called mods and custom maps. The community produced them for free and out of love of the game. Now to get a map editor in a game you would have to call in a bomb threat or have a mouth like Sasha Grey.

No one? Really maybe you just haven't been looking too hard. Sure there aren't many pc only developers but who cares if a game is multiplatform long as pc version kicks ass. There is Valve our god, CDProjektRed (TW2 NOW!!!!!), those who made stalker (bit composer games?), DICE. Ubi has also been rather kind to us after they removed natzi drm and added cool stuff to brotherhood like eyefinity support.

But I remember the good ol' days when I played MOHAA (basebuilder mod is asum) and UT99.

illuknisaa wrote:

Movac wrote:

Great post. Sums up a lot of my feelings toward videogames. To be honest I miss when playing online videogames made me a big nerd and pc games were a niche market. Now everyone person above the age of 5 has a ps3 or xbox with ethernet. No one developes for PCs anymore, casual average games are made for casual average gamers. Mostly the reason why I quit nearly all PC games and returned to wargaming. /elitisttearsoff

PS: I love hearing these post 2005 "gamers" talk about the next DLC they're gonna buy. Back in the day they were called mods and custom maps. The community produced them for free and out of love of the game. Now to get a map editor in a game you would have to call in a bomb threat or have a mouth like Sasha Grey.

No one? Really maybe you just haven't been looking too hard. Sure there aren't many pc only developers but who cares if a game is multiplatform long as pc version kicks ass. There is Valve our god, CDProjektRed (TW2 NOW!!!!!), those who made stalker (bit composer games?), DICE. Ubi has also been rather kind to us after they removed natzi drm and added cool stuff to brotherhood like eyefinity support.

But I remember the good ol' days when I played MOHAA (basebuilder mod is asum) and UT99.

And then of course there is the biggest one of all... Blizzard.

Kilkrazy wrote:That was when videogaming came out of the bedroom

I see someone owned Custer's Revenge.

Ahtman wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:That was when videogaming came out of the bedroom

I see someone owned Custer's Revenge.

And Mortal Kombat is responsible for the creation of the ESRB.