[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_...