Question: Discuss the ways in which the candidates’ own experiences of media consumption (how you use, access, and produce) illustrate wider patterns and trends in audience behavior.
My own experiences with using, consuming, and accessing video games have most definitely changed throughout my life. When I was young enough to hold a controller, I grew up with game distributors like GameStop, Blockbuster, and Nintendo magazines that advertised the shiniest new consoles and games. Before platforms like Steam and Origin, I had to physically drive out with my parents to go get the game I wanted from the store--a practice I fondly remember as being the most exciting thing to happen to me that week. I have noticed throughout the years that while GameStop is still somewhat alive and kicking, Nintendo has seemingly only grown stronger as a company. I believe that this is due to Nintendo adapting to the newer digital markets better than GameStop did, resulting in GameStop being mostly overshadowed in favor of online distributor services like Steam. In the past 10 years, the market has shifted dramatically in favor of online distributors, which has given consumers a wider range of choice and better accessibility to the games they want.
I no longer have to drive to GameStop just to spend 20 minutes trying to find the game I want---if it’s even in stock. With digital retailers you no longer need to worry about a game being sold out, since digital codes can be infinitely generated. While the games themselves can’t sell out, consoles, however, still face the problem of being sold out in minutes. As observed with the Playstation-5 console that was released in November 2020, it sold out in nearly a few minutes--and is for the most part still very difficult to get ahold of. I believe this is a result of the power of digital advertising and accessibility that the internet provides to video gamers, which in my opinion, will only serve to become more and more digitized as time goes on.