How do you view games as entertainment?

Okay, so maybe I’m weird, but I’m at the point where playing video games has replaced watching TV for the most part. I don’t really watch any of the streaming options — I mostly use Netflix for background noise when I’m doing something like cooking dinner, and I don’t even have Disney+ so I haven’t seen The Mandalorian or WandaVision or The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, although thanks to Twitter I don’t really feel like I have to watch those because every single plot element of every episode is immediately everywhere.

What’s weird is, I don’t really miss it. Playing WoW, then maybe Diablo 3 and then some of whatever my current gaming obsession is — Immortals: Fenyx Rising or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla for a while, at the moment Cyberpunk 2077, and then there are like four potential replacements on the horizon — seems to fill up that void that TV has left, and I’m honestly a lot more content with gaming as my main form of entertainment nowadays. I mean, you watch TV, you don’t do anything, while I spend my time gaming deciding where the characters should go, what they should do, the interactive pull of it is really strong.

If they ever invent a working Holodeck I’m in trouble.

But I know that mass media is doing fine in the age of streaming — more stuff every day and lots of people out there consuming it. So I have to wonder, do people have time to play games? How many of us are using gaming as our main form of entertainment, and how do you integrate that with TV and movies? And is it just that the pandemic has broken old habits — I used to go see a few movies a year, but I haven’t done that since late 2019 and I have no idea if I’ll ever feel safe doing that again, whereas I can game entirely at home and never have to go anywhere.

So what do y’all think? Are you playing more games now, or are you still handily entertained by other media?