[an_opabinia]

There are two problems: (1) hardly any History of Art and Architecture people play competitive multiplayer games, which are far and away the gaming zeitgeist, (2) you can't be taken seriously in a History of Art and Architecture program taking a positivist or normatively-positive approach to video games.

There are a million interesting things you can say about architecture in video games! There are more people that can close their eyes and visualize the exact locations of the plants in Counter-Strike's Office map than there are people who can visualize any other building anywhere in the history of the world, other than their own homes. And it would be really interesting to just talk about the design of levels as spaces for killing in a fair way, as opposed to say, architecting a museum or a school.

[whatshisface]

>taking a positivist [...] approach to video games.

As a member of the Positivist school of video game philosophy, I think that the only valid statements about videogames are those that can be reduced to empirical fact.

[whateveracct]

i'm not so sure competitive multiplayer games are "the gaming zeitgeist."

They're popular, sure. But honestly they don't appeal to many or most gamers.

[vkou]

https://store.steampowered.com/stats/

Sorted by active users:

    860,000 - CS:GO
    480,000 - DOTA 2
    173,000 - Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer (Mostly a multiplayer GTA mod)
    146,000 - Apex: Legends
    130,000 - PubG
    112,000 - Rust
    93,500 - Destiny 2
    88,400 - GTA V
    76,000 - Rocket League
    67,000 - R6:S
    62,000 - Football Manager

I think it's pretty clear that competitive multiplayer games are the gaming zeitgeist (On the PC). Rust, Destiny 2, GTA V + mod, and Football Manager are the only titles in this list that are really played in a non-competitive manner.

Now, its true that in terms of copies sold, competitive multiplayer games are not quite as dominant.

[whateveracct]

Yeah I'd say it's been the PC gaming zeitgeist for a long time now. That's fair.

[teej]

Fortnite as of 6 months ago had 25 million daily active players.

[whateveracct]

Fortnite isn't really comparable to the list of top Steam games in my replies though.

Like Brawl Stars is also super popular, but it isn't exactly a "competitive multiplayer game" like dota. Most people play it casually without a huge care of W/L.