Do Popular Video Games Reflect What Society Is Scared Of?

mmorpg.com:

Even in today’s modern age, video games are an often underappreciated art form when it comes to wider society. The majority of gamers know the impact and value that video games can offer, but folk who aren’t interested in games often miss why they’re so special to fans. 

While some video games do exist purely for the sake of entertainment and stress relief, there’s plenty of titles that hold a lot more meaning than people give them credit for. 

In fact, video games are often a fantastic lens to look at society through and can tell us quite a lot about the people who play them.

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at how popular video games often correlate to a desire of the general public or to a deep-rooted fear that society holds. We’ll also be looking at the cultural significance of some seemingly shallow or silly titles, too. 

We’ll be using the word zeitgeist a few times in this article, so let’s take a quick look at what it actually means in this context.

German in origin, zeitgeist is a word that essentially means ‘spirit of the time’. 

The term is often used when talking about a particular time or point in history, like the Renaissance or the roaring Twenties. It’s interesting to look at how the general vibe of a particular era is portrayed in popular media from that time, as things like films and games often tell us a lot about how people feel about the state of the world.

The inspiration for this article actually came from the popular theory that famous horror films often reflect the common fears of their era.

For example, the original Poltergeist film from the 80s can be taken to symbolize the then commonly held fear of new technologies entering the home and disrupting standard ways of living. 

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