> The International was heavily advertised on Steam products. Which is the biggest gaming store.
The biggest gaming store is almost certainly the Android Google Play Store's gaming section. It also wouldn't surprise me if the nintendo eShop is larger than the steam store, but at the very least I'm very confident in Google Play and iOS app stores being larger than steam for games.
I think the majority of gamers have never played a PC game or watched esports. The parent post only said "I even played games", and you jumped to "watching esports" and "twitch". Watching esports is a tiny niche of gamers. Watching twitch also is.
That's the point, if you don't know about any esport, why would you know about this one? If you do know about esports then you know about The International.
But let's also say that The International was on ESPN, and other "sports" TV channels.
Dota players play/watch Dota. Similar thing also applies to country strike players.
At least this is the experience in my circle of friends. Got a couple friends who have pretty much only played Dota (or CS) for the last 15+ years and have 0 interest in even trying any other game. There is also the crowd (including me) who play video games in general but these are very clearly different groups.
So this is like saying "football fans are insular to football". I mean yeah they are football fans not "sports fans".
I think it also has a lot to do with it being much easier to actually play the sport/game.
When the pros are not playing you can just play yourself. With football/etc playing the game in a proper competitive setup is quite the hassle. In Dota or CS you just get 4 of your friends and press a button and in 2 to 3 minutes you are playing.
I assume this is being downvoted because arguments like this are usually either no-true-scotsmanning or borne out of elitism.
However, what is true is that "video games" are so variegated as a medium that it's probably worth splitting it up into multiple mediums, in the same way that television, short film, and feature film are all considered different mediums despite being largely the same in many ways. If The Godfather and Caillou are different mediums, then Red Dead Redemption and Candy Crash can also be different mediums.
It's not that candy crush and other casual games aren't real games. It's that the modern versions currently in the app stores aren't games. Original versions of candy crush, angry birds, etc. have been removed. What is available now are time-gated gem stores. Maybe 1% of titles aren't reskinned clones that can be played more than 5 minutes straight.
Don't just sneak "console gamers" in there, that's disingenuous when the GP didn't say anything about them.
Anyways, statistics aside he's right. Mobile games aren't the same thing as console/PC games. They are, almost without exception, thinly veiled monetization machines designed to be almost fun but not actually fun, just so you will pay money. They are literally designed to be less fun as a business strategy. There are games on real gaming platforms which are just as exploitative and poorly designed, but they are the exception. With mobile games they are the rule.
Given that the nature of the markets is so wildly different, it's perfectly reasonably to say "no, these are different things".
You also seem to be thinking of Candy Crush style games, whereas I was pointing out that in recent years some of the most popular mobile games are FPS, RTS, also things like Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact and other action games. On the other end, desktop games have also become monetization machines in the same fashion - Fortnite, Apex, CS:GO, OW, Minecraft, Roblox are massive money-making machines. Any judgement about mobile games being 'less fun' or 'less serious' is entirely subjective.
This thread started because someone though Steam stands as the universal entrypoint to gaming in general, which is absolutely far from the truth.
The growth of mobile gaming in regions that used to be dominated by LAN cafe based gaming is super interesting. Most of the previously buzzing gaming hubs died during covid. PC Gaming equipment is extortionate, even in higher net worth areas, phones are ubiquitous anyway
High-end equipment certainly increased sharply in price in the last few years, but few people gaming on PC spend anywhere near that amount of money. If you just went to play most games on a reasonable framerate (30fps) a Steam Deck for 400$ is perfectly fine.
For those with high-resolution screens and 144fps the equipment is not affordable to most but not necessary.
The biggest gaming store is almost certainly the Android Google Play Store's gaming section. It also wouldn't surprise me if the nintendo eShop is larger than the steam store, but at the very least I'm very confident in Google Play and iOS app stores being larger than steam for games.
I think the majority of gamers have never played a PC game or watched esports. The parent post only said "I even played games", and you jumped to "watching esports" and "twitch". Watching esports is a tiny niche of gamers. Watching twitch also is.