I dont understand why its considered more mature to sit passively in front of the TV for hours as opposed to playing helldivers with your friends.
Generational gap + all forms of "play" as a nebulous art.
Playing video games has only recently become more acceptable and understandable. For the longest time it was toys for kids and bars/arcades from the 70s to maybe mid 90s when more mature games started coming out. Even then, the people who caught on were the younger generation, not the older one. Games were more simple back in the 70s and 80s (like simple as in arcade style pick up and play easy), and there were still a good number of simple games in the 90s & 2000s. We now have more room for graphics and plots. Around the 2010s was a big push for "video games are art" and outsiders could appreciate that more as they looked at games with good voice acting and non-ass 3D models. In 2025, people born in the 80s are in their 40s and the generations are slowly catching up on the view of video games, with most young people in the west being raised with them and the big advancements.
Play itself is a nebulous art. Is football art? Is basketball art? These things are seen as fun to do with your friends in your spare time for exercise or as a semi-serious hobby as an adult. It's "useless" in the corporate world unless you are a professional or making money off of it in some way. Games have tons of strategy and skill put into them, but they don't register as something to take seriously as an adult thing because what use do you get out of having a big war game on a table? There's lots of hidden benefits to play we don't see or understand, but play is seen as more childish as it is something that we're not really doing for anything other than fun, and why are you spending money or time over a hobby that isn't useful (this is what some insane people actually believe)?
No, I'm talking the general hobbyist, not those who go into debt over craft supplies or figurines. That's worth bullying. A game is also a game: you win or lose and there's almot nothing on the line but pride. It isn't "serious". That's not a bad thing as we need time to chill and blow off steam with fun gameplay or interesting challenges, but if you translate it to video games, it means you're not getting them taken seriously because... it's just a game.
TV & Movies are seen more as serious and adult since there's no real interaction from the viewer. That sounds bizarre, but it means that every part of the work is handled by the creators from beginning to end. It's something you observe, then think about. It sets a tone and it gives you something to interpret. It's storytelling, communication. Movie buffs can be seen as childish depending on their movie choices, same with TV show fans, but in general, we're in a time where all generations had movies their entire lives and TV for most or all of their lives.
It's only more recently (as in ~25ish years) that mainstream games have gone from simple entertainment to more complex works with plots and more "I pay my taxes" mature themes. Things like that have always existed, but they weren't as common or accessible as games geared towards kids and general audiences. Things like simulators & war games with complex mechanics aren't thought about at all by normies, so they don't really think about the art of strategy or the depth of mechanics one can go for. Game graphics improving enough that you can't count the polygons or pixels in a body model also help - you might be used to them but normies go "wtf why this crunchy???" and don't look at it if they can't get past it.
Lastly, the image of game players have evolved over the years, but there is always a persistent theme of autism and arrested development in the negative images. We all know that one guy who doesn't bathe and ignores his responsibilities for gaming all day. Or the girl who keeps pulling for lootboxes in Genshin Impact and spergs endlessly about her favorite characters and gets defensive about her ships. Gaming has always attracted a more socially awkward and slightly useless crowd. There will always be those 20% or so of people who are obnoxious and immature who can REALLY impact the image of a hobby on others. Imagine meeting people who scream about their fanfiction to you or who insist on not bathing multiple times over for any other hobby and it really doesn't help its optics.
It's some jumbled thoughts ag 6am but I hope I got a point across.
