Audience and Institution Practice Essay

Kol Bennett

Audiences and Institution Essay

My Question: In relation to the media area you have studied, discuss the way audience consumption has changed over time.

Kol Bennett

Audiences and Institution Essay

The way people and audiences have consumed media has changed over time. Consumption of movies, music, and print has also changed but this essay will cover video games. Video games have been around for years and the way people play them has changed drastically over time. As Jeff Desjardins makes clear in his article The History and Evolution of the Video Games Market, video games have gotten much better since the first video game, Spacewar! in 1962. The more current video games have gained complexity, sophistication, and quality.

The first video games were large cartridges on small televisions and screens. The controllers only had one button and had to be connected to the console. It was like that for years and those games were very pixelated. However, televisions became more advanced and so did the games. There was the Gameboy which came out in 1989 and it was a handheld console made by Nintendo. It changed the way people played and viewed video games. It was still in black and white, but the control buttons were on the physical device so there was no remote needed. Then came the Gameboy color which allowed people to play the games they loved but in color. After that, there was the Gameboy Advanced which had a wider screen and smaller cartridges and kept the color. However, the Wii, which was also made by Nintendo was one of the first consoles with wireless controllers. That console also used discs for its games instead of cartridges.

More recent changes in gaming include the Wii U, Nintendo DS, and 3DS, the Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, and even specialized computers. These recent consoles and game devices are the most popular. They have better graphics and run much smoother. Most of them use discs but the DS series and the Switch still use cartridges, but these are small.

The Xbox and the PlayStation has become so popular that multiple versions of the console have been released over the years. The latest version of the Xbox is the Xbox 1X and the latest PlayStation is the PlayStation 4. As each new console was released, they had new features and one of the biggest things with this technology is being able to play online with other people and play with your friends. Consoles have become very popular with gamers. In fact, according to the series The evolution of video gaming and content consumption people who identify themselves as heavy gamers say they use consoles 45% of the time compared to computers at 47%.

 There are also computers and monitors specifically made for gaming. In the Executive Summary of The evolution of video gaming and content consumption, “…gamers now spend more time playing games than streaming movies or television shows to their computer…”  There is now even cross-promotion in video games between Xbox and Spotify. You can download Spotify on your Xbox and play your music from there.

Overall, the way people consume media through video games has changed over many years. Kevin Webb of Business Insider stated it well when he said “Gaming is… transforming pop culture and redefining the ways that young people consume entertainment.” Consumption of media is probably going to grow and change even more in the future. Just how far video games have come is impressive and it is going to keep growing.