Gaming Culture: A New Language for the Digital Age

December 4, 2025

Video games are becoming a medium for thinking, socializing, learning and working in new ways. A different form of self-expression, game creation and modification as a hobby is an established part of gaming (Sotamaa, 2010; Lai et al., 2021). Some respondents modified (“modded”) existing games, designed, and sometimes developed their own games as well.

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This environment can encourage game-makers to embrace their role as agents of societal innovation, learning and economic growth. The global market’s trajectory shows how gaming has become a sophisticated cognitive environment. For instance, Fortune Business Insights shares that Virtual Reality (VR) technology in gaming alone is expected to hold a value of $189.17 billion by 2032. The release of Player’s Unknown Battlegrounds, or PUBG, exemplified this transformation.

Social Impact And Advocacy

The impact of games and gaming cultures on young people’s wellbeing and behavior has been a source of concern and interest from the early steps of modern digital gaming in the late 1970s and early 1980s to contemporary times (Rogers, 2013). To our knowledge, only a few studies (Lenhart et al., 2008; Aarsand, 2012) have sought a more general understanding of young people’s relationship with gaming. Whether gaming has a beneficial or detrimental effect on young people’s lives is a defining feature in both the research and the public discussion of youth digital gaming. In this qualitative study, we draw from a thematic analysis of the experiences of 180 game players in Finland, aged 15–25 years. Utilizing the digital gaming relationship (DGR) theory, we explore how different aspects of gaming actualize in their lives, and how different features of gaming culture participation come together to form their experience. We contend that framing gaming as a balancing act between beneficial and detrimental obscures much of the complexity of young people’s gaming, reinforces a partially false dichotomy, and overlooks young people’s agency.

The AI-Driven Revolution in Immersive Gaming

• The closest analogue to this in gaming cultures are esports which are becoming both increasingly popular and more institutionalized in the vein of traditional sports (Brock, 2017; Scholz, 2019; Törhönen, 2021; Ruotsalainen, 2022).
• Several respondents, however, also brought up that attitudes toward gaming had become more positive and accommodating.
• Experts believe gaming will be the gateway into the adoption and understanding of the metaverse.
• This framing also connects to fundamental societal discussions on the value of play and leisure, seen, for example, in some of our respondents’ use of professionalization to justify gaming.
• Personal gaming can be seen as the activity of playing alone and solely engaging with the game rather than other mediums and meanings conveyed through them.
• In 2017, for example, a Guild Wars 2 player found that a fire had caused extensive damage to her home.

The cutting-edge solutions pioneered in games are also often appropriated for other purposes, including research in virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, medical imaging and more. Not only does it generate billions in revenue every year, but it also employs hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. Whether it’s games development and publishing or esports and streaming, gaming is a sector that has gone global. The earlier discussion on the habit economy focused on the external mechanisms through which games influence user engagement.

Data Availability Statement

However, the distinction between leisure and labor also relates to gaming more generally. Learning how to play games often requires considerable effort, and game play can in itself be laborious and repetitive (e.g., Orme, 2021). This framing also connects to fundamental societal discussions on the value of play and leisure, seen, for example, in some of our respondents’ use of professionalization to justify gaming.

Serious Games For Health

As a result, players develop micro-behaviors that mimic real-world cooperation and leadership dynamics. Over time, such a dynamic blurs the line between recreational play and habitual engagement. As a report by Ernst & Young pointed out, popular games like Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox have incorporated several aspects of the metaverse, including virtual worlds where players meet to play games and use features like in-game chats and in-game payments.

Data and method

And many industries outside of gaming have adopted these innovations to boost productivity, improve the client experience, increase engagement and boost sales. This year’s Under 30 class continues to demonstrate how young pioneers from diverse backgrounds are changing the gaming industry. Of the 30 nominees selected by the judges, 14 are women or non-binary, and 14 identify as people of color (some entries are shared by multiple cofounders).

1. Level of engagement

Hobbies, school, and work were mainly mentioned by respondents due to the time constraints they would introduce to playing video games. Related to this, some respondents mentioned that they would like to have some more time for playing video games or that they used to have more time to play video games. The changing rhythms of everyday life and engagements influenced how much the respondents spent time engaging with video games (see Apperley, 2010; Meriläinen, 2022). The questionnaire was targeted at 15–25-year-old Finnish speakers who played digital games.

• If we embrace the potential of games to make the world a better place and build supportive institutions to help them do so, we can create a world where games help lead us toward a brighter future.
• Our listing is not an exhaustive list, nor a foundation for a categorical model (see Meriläinen, 2023).
• As Bergstrom’s (2019; see also Wiik, 2023) exploration of the players of the massively multiplayer game EVE Online demonstrates, quitting or actively gaming is not a binary, but a spectrum.
• Experts believe gaming will be the gateway into the adoption and understanding of the metaverse.
• Several respondents, however, also brought up that attitudes toward gaming had become more positive and accommodating.
• Personal gaming can be seen as the activity of playing alone and solely engaging with the game rather than other mediums and meanings conveyed through them.

Gaming As Therapy

• Activities such as cosplay, writing fanfiction, or drawing served as avenues for self-expression outside immediate game play contexts.
• As discussed in the background section of this article, learning is often mentioned as an important gaming benefit, and the learning dimension was brought up by many of the respondents.
• This said, people at opposing ends of the gaming spectrum, very intense, professional, or problematically gaming players as well as uninvested, occasional players are present in the data only to a limited extent.
• This highlights how gaming can also be a constant negotiation of how one can participate with limited resources, whether these relate to material (the gaming hardware), personal finances, or available time (e.g., Apperley, 2010; Meriläinen, 2022).
• While all ages in the 15–25 years range were present in the men’s sample with an average age of 20.1 years, the youngest woman to respond was 17 years and the average age in the women’s sample was 21.8 years.
• Gamers demand realistic graphics, which require even more powerful graphics processing chips.
• The theory takes as its starting point that each individual has a different relationship with gaming, and an individual’s relationship with gaming develops, and is actively constructed, over a long period of time and is influenced by a variety of factors.
• An interesting negative outcome of gaming skills for some respondents was that their high level ruled out potential people to game with.

A study from Statista revealed that 33% of gamers in the US belong to the top one-third of households by income. More and more companies are realizing the potential power of integrating game-like elements, such as rewards and challenges, into their processes. The global gamification market reached a value of $14.5 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to nearly $48 billion by the end of the decade. Virtual reality (VR) allows gamers to be immersed in a simulated 3D environment where they can interact and explore virtual surroundings that approximate reality.

4. Ways of engaging with gaming

Based on our results, we suggest alternative approaches that help reduce and avoid these problems. Although gaming can certainly have both beneficial and detrimental impacts on game players, these are not the be-all and end-all of young people’s gaming culture participation, nor did the young people in our study usually frame gaming primarily as a balancing act between the two. The spectrum of beneficial–harmful is only a single, narrow perspective on young people’s participation in the social world of gaming. Providing alternatives to the impact point of view is crucial to how we view games and gaming as culture, as media, and as a part of everyday life. The framing of gaming influences perceptions and attitudes (Kümpel and Haas, 2016), and whether gaming is primarily seen, for example, as a tool, a health risk, a form of art, or an everyday activity impacts how it is perceived, discussed, and studied. Furthermore, knowledge of the different potential impacts of gaming without a broader understanding and critical exploration of the phenomenon can cause its own problems, whether in the form of moral panics (Pasanen, 2017) or unrealistic optimism (Deterding, 2014).

Respondents discussed not only their preferences but also voiced their views on how they perceived competition as influencing gaming more broadly. Some respondents saw esports and the professionalization of gaming as a reason https://alltimesmagazine.com/the-new-game-generation-how-technology-shapes-gaming-behavior-in-ghana/ for gaming becoming too competitive (see Blamey, 2022). Echoing the different gaming mentalities mentioned above, these respondents saw a focus on competition as antithetical to relaxed fun and enjoyment (see Brock, 2017).

The Evolution of Video Game Development and Impact on User Habits

Although games are often discussed from the perspective of consumption rather than production, gaming also provided an important outlet for creativity and self-expression. For some respondents, creativity was expressed through game play itself, whether as designs in games such as Minecraft or The Sims or as innovative tactics in competitive games. The dimension also encompasses different types of playful behavior both during game play and in gaming culture more broadly, such as cosplay. Trolling in its different forms (Stenros, 2015; Cook et al., 2018) was an interesting example, as some participants did not frame their self-labeled trolling behavior as hostile, but as playful, prioritizing engagement over consequence (see Masek and Stenros, 2021).

Virtual Reality In Education

In 2024, 3.5 trillion hours were spent playing mobile games worldwide, according to PR Newswire. Also, the in-app purchase revenue increased by 8% to $82 billion compared to the previous year. The modern video game has journeyed through the dynamic intersections of technology and human behavior. The recreational pursuit of yesteryear has given rise to competitive careers today. These games are doubling as social spaces where gamers are building an active online community.

Gamification And Interactive Learning

Gaming can reduce stress, elevate mood and offer a form of social interaction for some players, acting as a valuable outlet for relaxation and self-expression. The connection between gaming and AI cuts both ways, as AI is becoming more integral to the video game experience. Some common uses of AI within gaming include altering in-game landscapes or changing the behavior of non-player characters (NPCs) based on human player decisions. Although the subject of problematic gaming was not very prominent in the data, mentions of occasional excessive gaming or unhealthy gaming habits featured in many responses.

Education And Learning

Many respondents, who typically spoke Finnish as a first language, assigned great importance to gaming as a way of learning English as a foreign language especially when they were younger. Respondents also mentioned more abstract development, such as new insight into their behavior. Changes in gaming did not always imply profound changes in an individual’s relationship with gaming. Gaming activities might be stopped for long periods at a time, yet an individual could still view gaming as an important part of their life and participate in the social world.

Serious Games For Health

Attitudes toward gaming and gaming cultures appear to be slowly shifting, yet seeing games in a very polarized way has a long history that still influences contemporary discourses about gaming (Rogers, 2013). Shaw (2010) notes that in media, gaming has been largely depicted as an undesirable activity, and likewise those playing video games (see Kowert et al., 2014). This goes hand in hand with how videogames have long been targeted by moral panics and viewed as a source of aggression, moral decay, and addiction (Rogers, 2013; Pasanen, 2017).

The closest analogue to this in gaming cultures are esports which are becoming both increasingly popular and more institutionalized in the vein of traditional sports (Brock, 2017; Scholz, 2019; Törhönen, 2021; Ruotsalainen, 2022). One respondent described both following esports and having esports streams on as “background noise” rather than something fully engaged with. Several respondents compared their experiences with games to other media such as books and movies. Echoing the notion of the active audience (see Behrenshausen, 2012), interactivity (see Christopher and Leuszler, 2023) was typically seen as the key difference. As discussed in the background section of this article, learning is often mentioned as an important gaming benefit, and the learning dimension was brought up by many of the respondents.

The DGR theory examines individuals’ engagement and relationship with the social world of digital gaming and was developed from the sport sociological theory of physical activity relationship (Koski, 2008) by Sokka (2021) and expanded by Meriläinen (2023). As a new theory, it has shown promise as a tool to understand gaming as a complex phenomenon (Meriläinen, 2023). The theory takes as its starting point that each individual has a different relationship with gaming, and an individual’s relationship with gaming develops, and is actively constructed, over a long period of time and is influenced by a variety of factors. These factors are the personal meanings given to gaming, internal and external influences on gaming, different ways of engaging with gaming, and the level of engagement with gaming.

These barriers are forcing innovation from video game developers for new hardware that is more comfortable to enhance the gaming experience and lower cost. As a result, gaming has been at the forefront of VR-related hardware innovation such as controls, screens, headsets, speakers and consoles to create an enhanced consumer experience. The communities of different games are often ungrateful towards the creators of the games and towards other players. The complex challenges to be solved to finish a video game help to develop cognitive skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and decision-making. Educational games are increasingly incorporated into curricula to complement teaching.

Although the adoption of VR by industries such as healthcare, retail and tourism is on the rise, the use in gaming has been slow due to high costs, uncomfortable equipment and a limited library. Developers of online Role Playing Games, like Guild Wars 2, have the opportunity to bring people together from across the world. 2We use the word “addiction” here as it was the word typically used by the respondents (cf. Nielsen, 2018). It was also possible to step into the world of the game itself, thanks to immersive gaming. Expect more advanced gaming features—such as the metaverse—to infiltrate nongaming business activities.

Many gamers use multiple platforms, and they also demonstrate higher engagement retention. This is the result of the habit economy, which uses features like micro-rewards and challenge cycles for user retention. The resulting games demonstrated creativity despite being developed using simple code and pixels. The metaverse is a virtual world where people can interact with each other in a digital environment. Experts believe gaming will be the gateway into the adoption and understanding of the metaverse. Nvidia leveraged its expertise in gaming to develop chips for more general computing processes, including calculation-heavy processes such as machine learning.

Respondents reported their annoyance over their fellow players being either too serious or too easy-going, depending on their preferences. A minority of respondents could be seen as insiders, expressing the importance of and their belonging to the social world of gaming in different ways. Video games can be useful for cognitive rehabilitation in patients with neurological disorders or injuries. Games that require memory, attention and executive functions can help improve cognitive abilities and quality of life. Video games are being used for healthcare needs from rehabilitation to mental health treatment. Games that are serious about healthcare offer patients fun and exciting ways to help manage health conditions.

Gaming is often seen as a dichotomous activity defined by the sometimes stark contrast between its “dark” and “light” sides (e.g., Greitemeyer, 2022), and issues such as violent content and problematic gaming are juxtaposed with aspects such as friendship, learning, and relaxation. However, many aspects of gaming sit outside the dichotomy of clearly beneficial or detrimental, light or dark, but are at the core of gaming nevertheless. With the continued success of independent game development, more creative people are getting involved in making games—some of it artistic, some of it innovative.

External influences mentioned in the responses varied from those that increased or reduced the amount of engagement with video games to those that influenced the type of engagement respondents had with gaming. Similarly, they could be direct and forceful (i.e., parents forbidding certain games) or have a softer, more indirect influence (i.e., friends enjoying certain games). Game fictions were an important part of the gaming experience, and while immersion can stem from different elements of game play (Ermi and Mäyrä, 2005), respondents mainly discussed imaginative immersion.

As demonstrated by the second quote below, a change in participation sometimes impacted only a part of the social world. The fourth group of respondents were those classified as tourists, who enjoyed different aspects of gaming but were nevertheless not very invested in it, transiency and entertainment being common features of their gaming (Unruh, 1979, p. 119). They might regularly play different kinds of games on a variety of platforms and devices or have a history of very intense gaming yet did not view gaming as all that important. This observation shows the shifting nature of DGR and contests common notions of “casual gaming”, stereotypically seen as occasional smartphone gaming limited to a few games (see Juul, 2010). Outside of a clinical context, video games are a therapeutic tool for the mind that helps promote mental health and well-being.