Is gaming socially acceptable now?

Video Games are generally associated with nerdy kids with glasses hiding in their bedrooms. But in the past couple of years, video games have started to appear in main stream press, receiving more attention than in previous years. This new stream of media attention can be attributed to the success of the Nintendo Wii. With the Wii's main target audience aimed at casual gamers consisting of titles like Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit, which uses movement and motion controls not normally associated with traditional games and has led to great commercial success with millions of sales worldwide. The success of the Wii has forced their two main rivals, Microsoft and Sony to adopt the same technology with the releases of Kinect and Playstation Move respectively. The casual gamer market is slowly making a bigger presence  and even over taking the hardcore gaming markets. Games like Guitar Hero and Singstar which makes a group of friends/family play together are great games to bring out for parties and gatherings which could not have been said 10 years ago. The rise of the casual games have been one of the driving forces behind the rise of video game culture with many more people willing to pick up a controller,plastic guitar etc to try out a game for maybe even the first time in their lives.

Although casual games are not the only reason for the rise of video game culture. The success of big franchises like the Call of Duty series and Fifa series have received great amounts of advertising and press coverage, although not all necessarily positive as with the recent case of the release of Medal of Honor and the use of the Taliban name in the multiplayer mode. Many midnight launches of big franchises have been well attended with some people queuing for over 2-3 hours to be the first person to get their hands on their new favourite game. Even the supermarkets have been able to cash in on the hype surrounding these titles and have held their own midnight launches bringing a reduction of prices to attract even more customers than even big specialists high street stores like Game and HMV. These events shows that gaming has slowly become an increasingly popular form of entertainment and could even be placed in the same breath as trips to the cinema.

The rise of video game culture can be attributed to these two main factors, with an increasing amount of advertising for games all across the world, there is no hiding away from video games in this current generation, with the release of Kinect and Playstation Move, which allows first time gamers an easy way to enjoy games without the complicated control systems, this will ensure that even more people will be playing new and fun games, which might not appeal to hardcore gamers but will appeal to the masses  Will it replace film as the number one form of entertainment? maybe in 5 to 10 years time, but films will be looking anxiously behind their backs in the next couple of years at the behemoth behind them, which is video games.