[psychomugs]

As a counterdote, I both played video games and played music (band, church groups, self-studying) for significant amounts of time in my youth. I still play music today and my only regret is not spending more time on it earlier, whereas I regret spending so much time on video games. The collaboration and shareability of music is unparalleled; I can connect with people and actually create something that is an expression of myself and my collaborators, and even people who've never picked up an instrument can appreciate pleasant-sounding music. With video games, you really need to know the mechanics of a specific game to appreciate someone else's performance, and very rarely do the results of a video game manifest itself in the real world apart from the consequential skills you may pick up.

The problem of quitting music once it's no longer compulsory is endemic and I think more rooted with pedagogy than music itself as a medium. I staved it off because I was largely self-taught for theory and the instruments I currently play (piano, guitar), whereas people who were forced into lessons or only did it to fill an elective slot in school quit once they were able to. I've gone months-long stints without dedicated practice, but to me it's closer to an unforgettable skill than riding a bike is (because I don't know how to ride a bike).

[arvinsim]

> the collaboration and shareability of music is unparalleled;

Music has been around since the dawn of mankind. Video games has been around 20-30 years?

I will not be surprised when 100 years from now, video games will be the acceptable hobby while playing instruments would be seem as quaint when one can just tweak some params in some AI models to generate good music.

[psychomugs]

*Video games /have/ been around

If anything, this statement is a testament to music's endurance as an expressive medium. As mentioned by others on this discussion, video games are largely consumable media with products that don't extend beyond the screen.

The whole AI-replacing-creativity debate is a large can of worms. Yes, there are already generative music models that can create pleasant-sounding music, but for many practitioners, the process is more important than the product. There's a reason people still perform live in front of audiences when it would be more reasonable and convenient to play lossless recordings at home.

[arvinsim]

> As mentioned by others on this discussion, video games are largely consumable media with products that don't extend beyond the screen.

And the same has been said about the TV. That it would never be mainstream.

My point is that video games is in its infancy. It has potential to be an art form, especially if VR/AR takes off once we get powerful enough hardware.

> There's a reason people still perform live in front of audiences when it would be more reasonable and convenient to play lossless recordings at home.

And there is a reason why people still enjoy playing video games even if people stigmatize it as a time sink. It's not about efficiency or productivity.

[psychomugs]

Why not extrapolate this argument to non-video games then? Why have card or board games not usurped music as a dominant hobby in the millennia that they've been around?

I won't debate that video games don't have merit as artistic media; some of my favorites from my adolescence have had positive effects on my world view and self in the same way works in television and film have, and I cut my teeth on advanced piano arrangements from video game music (specifically Kyle Landry's). I think that the problem lies in video games being a demanding medium that often rewards mindless grinding and non-transferrable skills. In McLuhan's terms, it's a hot (demanding) medium that only has the benefits of a cool (passively consumed) medium [1].

To say that music will somehow cede to video games eventually, when music has been around for literal eons, is flippant.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media#%22Hot%22_...