The Wild Stat That Proves Gen Z Is The Gaming Generation
It seems Gen Z, composed of plucky youths born between the mid-1990s and early-2010s, is poised to change the way we interact with media.
A new Deloitte Digital Media Trends survey indicates that Gen Z would rather spend time playing video games than watching television. 26% of zoomers said they preferred playing video games over any other activity, and only 10% said they preferred television. Deloitte speculated that if Gen Z continues the trend of preferring interactive media like video games over video services like TV, the demand for video could decrease. If video media loses the top spot in terms of demand, "media companies should be prepared to evolve and take a diversified approach, starting with gaming."
Variety spoke with Kevin Westcott, the vice chairman at Deloitte about the survey. Westcott explained that "Everybody believed that when millennials aged up, they would adopt the same media behaviors as older cohorts. That didn't happen." Many Millennials never stopped playing video games, and it's likely that Gen Z won't either. In that case, Westcott said, "If you're a traditional media company, you're going have to offer a broader range of entertainment than just movies and TV shows." No one knows for sure what a future would look like if Hulu suddenly began making video games, but the gap may not be as wide as some analysts think.
In 2018, "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" released on Netflix. While it might not have been as innovative as some critics expected, "Bandersnatch" allowed viewers to become players, actively choosing how the movie-length story would unfold. It let viewers go back and correct their mistakes, just like a video game might. Though "Black Mirror" hasn't released another piece of media like "Bandersnatch" yet, the project shows that interactive video might be a way to merge the worlds of video games and film.
The news that Gen Z favors video games over television might make more than a few readers feel old, but don't fret. This is a trend that has been developing for years. As video games become more accessible and ubiquitous to the entertainment sphere, it's only natural that younger generations, who play games at younger and younger ages, prefer them to TV. According to Deloitte, 87% of Gen Z plays video games daily or weekly. Maybe that explains why Ninja encountered so many kids in "Fortnite."