Are Video Games Getting Worse?

Roberto Pelayo

Many people believe that video games are getting better, while some believe that they are getting worse. Video games are surging in popularity, but a lot of “OG” gamers (gamers who played years ago) believe it’s just not the same as how it was years ago. 

Rise in popularity

People think that video games are dying in popularity — it’s not even close. In 2020, 2.7 billion people played videogames globally, but in 2024, 3.3 billion people played videogames globally and this year, more people are expected. We must take into account that 2020 was the year Coronavirus struck the world and put billions of people into lockdown. Considering that 2020 was the year people had to stay home, a lot of people had the chance to play video games; this shows that there’s more people playing video games in 2025 than in a time when we were literally forced to stay at home.

Rise of no creativity

My last point was that video games rose in popularity, which is true and is a good point, but creativity? No, not at all; it seems as if video games lack effort— bad or no storyline, repetitive, or have bad modelling. Roblox for example, the most popular game in the world has games inside of it. Those games have more concurrent players at moments than actual players of real games. Take Steal a Brainrot and Grow a Garden; These games average more than 20 million concurrent players when an update happens, literally breaking records. But if you play these games, you’d know how easy it would be to make and code, whereas other games that clearly have a lot of effort put into it usually have a lack of players. 

Brainrot

The rise of  “brainrot” , content that is annoying but in a funny way, repetitive, or has negative effects on the human mind is on a huge spike among children. Brainrot back in times like 2020-2023 like the terms Ohio and Tung Tung Tung Sahur were funny and caught laughs among people, but brainrot today is so repetitive and annoying in a bad way. As young children are the ones playing videogames a lot this year, they overuse brainrot and annoy people.

It’s not the same

As a result of the lack of creativity and major repetition of brainrot, videogames are becoming unenjoyable. With all factors considered, the answer to this topic is — yes, videogames are falling off and becoming boring.

Could be improved

Video games could be improved if the following factors are avoided:

• Lack of effort put into the videogames

• Bad modelling and easy coding

• Brainrot becoming less repetitive

Source: The Punished Backlog