Technology and gaming in Ghana

Inclusive design not only reflects the diversity of gamers but also encourages empathy and understanding between different cultures and backgrounds. With the influx of virtual reality (VR) technology, learning experiences can be made much more immersive. Through VR simulations, students can visit historical sites, “dissect” virtual organisms and engage with abstract concepts in ways that weren’t possible in the past. The current gaming landscape is an intersection of Artificial Intelligence, immersive design, and computational innovation. Gradually, the straightforward engagement between the machine and the player made way for a more calculated psychological architecture.

Gamification And Interactive Learning

These barriers are forcing innovation from video game developers for new hardware that is more comfortable to enhance the gaming experience and lower cost. As a result, gaming has been at the forefront of VR-related hardware innovation such as controls, screens, headsets, speakers and consoles to create an enhanced consumer experience. The communities of different games are often ungrateful towards the creators of the games and towards other players. The complex challenges to be solved to finish a video game help to develop cognitive skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and decision-making. Educational games are increasingly incorporated into curricula to complement teaching.

1. Level of engagement

External influences mentioned in the responses varied from those that increased or reduced the amount of engagement with video games to those that influenced the type of engagement respondents had with gaming. Similarly, they could be direct and forceful (i.e., parents forbidding certain games) or have a softer, more indirect influence (i.e., friends enjoying certain games). Game fictions were an important part of the gaming experience, and while immersion can stem from different elements of game play (Ermi and Mäyrä, 2005), respondents mainly discussed imaginative immersion.

4. Ways of engaging with gaming

Echoing earlier research on engaging with games beyond playing them (Koskimaa et al., 2021), watching videos and live streams were the most popular ways of following transmedial content about games. These different modalities (listening and watching) allowed respondents to engage with games differently than just playing games themselves, also changing where and how the game-related content could be followed. Sometimes the act of playing games was a side activity, for example, watching television. This problematizes the construction of players in general as an “active audience,” in comparison to more “passive audiences” (see Behrenshausen, 2012), and highlights how there can be different intensities of engagement depending on context and activity. The institutional factors affecting respondents’ activities around video games varied from family to school, work, and hobbies. This would mainly manifest in the ways parents would set rules and limitations on the time spent playing, and the types of games played (see Kutner et al., 2008; Meriläinen, 2021).

The Evolution of Video Game Development and Impact on User Habits

The DGR theory can also help individuals, regardless of their gaming participation, critically examine their own relationship with digital gaming and the different factors that shape it (see e.g., Przybylski, 2014; Russell and Johnson, 2017; Hopia et al., 2018). The previously discussed skill requirements of game play can present an issue of accessibility, whether because of lacking experience with a particular kind of game, intentional game design, or disability (e.g., Baltzar et al., 2022). Players’ perception of their skill could encourage or discourage them from playing https://alltimesmagazine.com/the-new-game-generation-how-technology-shapes-gaming-behavior-in-ghana/ games or influence game choices, while some respondents had physical limitations to their gaming. Activities such as cosplay, writing fanfiction, or drawing served as avenues for self-expression outside immediate game play contexts. An interesting negative outcome of gaming skills for some respondents was that their high level ruled out potential people to game with. Skill- or rank-based multiplayer systems or large differences in skill between friends and spouses could make gaming together difficult or even impossible, limiting opportunities for shared gaming sessions.

Data and method

Many gamers use multiple platforms, and they also demonstrate higher engagement retention. This is the result of the habit economy, which uses features like micro-rewards and challenge cycles for user retention. The resulting games demonstrated creativity despite being developed using simple code and pixels. The metaverse is a virtual world where people can interact with each other in a digital environment. Experts believe gaming will be the gateway into the adoption and understanding of the metaverse. Nvidia leveraged its expertise in gaming to develop chips for more general computing processes, including calculation-heavy processes such as machine learning.

Virtual Reality In Education

We present our analysis organized by the four main themes derived from the DGR theory (Figure 1). We start with the Level of engagement to demonstrate the considerable differences in young people’s engagement with game cultures, followed by the Personal meanings of gaming. We then explore the Internal and external influences that shape individuals’ relationship with gaming and conclude with the different ways gaming takes place in the theme Ways of engaging with gaming.

Under 30 Games 2025: Forging A New Path On Technology’s Cutting Edge

How cultural markers from gaming are changing how we consume products and communicate our values. Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent from the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements. The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because of privacy considerations, but will be made available through a public repository later for further research use once anonymized. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.

How Game Developers Shape Our World

• As younger generations seek out more interactive experiences, marketers must recognize the broad reach of the gaming community and the value inherent in this expanding group.
• In addition to external influences, respondents also mentioned internal influences that affected their engagement with video games.
• This said, few participants discussed long-term changes in their gaming participation.
• Many respondents, who typically spoke Finnish as a first language, assigned great importance to gaming as a way of learning English as a foreign language especially when they were younger.
• Shaw (2010) notes that in media, gaming has been largely depicted as an undesirable activity, and likewise those playing video games (see Kowert et al., 2014).
• With an eye toward ethics, we can harness the cultural energy of the gaming community to attract new consumers and customers.
• Even when one is not directly socializing, they can be contributing to the co-construction and upkeep of the social world of gaming by, for instance, streaming game play, participating in a multiplayer game, or posting about games on social media.

Gaming is often seen as a dichotomous activity defined by the sometimes stark contrast between its “dark” and “light” sides (e.g., Greitemeyer, 2022), and issues such as violent content and problematic gaming are juxtaposed with aspects such as friendship, learning, and relaxation. However, many aspects of gaming sit outside the dichotomy of clearly beneficial or detrimental, light or dark, but are at the core of gaming nevertheless. With the continued success of independent game development, more creative people are getting involved in making games—some of it artistic, some of it innovative.

Gaming’s Influence In The Office

Besides regional variations, this disparity illustrates the universal reach of mobile gaming. The transition from bulky consoles to compact smartphones marked a turning point in the gaming industry. The smartphone leveled the ground, bridging any gaps between high-end and entry-level players. Individuals and families have chosen to file a video game addiction lawsuit claim with TorHoerman Law. These cases only emphasize the broader societal significance of the habit economy.

• Educational games are increasingly incorporated into curricula to complement teaching.
• The recreational pursuit of yesteryear has given rise to competitive careers today.
• Consider games like Roblox or Fortnite that offer a sense of competition as well as belonging.
• To our knowledge, only a few studies (Lenhart et al., 2008; Aarsand, 2012) have sought a more general understanding of young people’s relationship with gaming.
• Well, I wasn’t even allowed to play Minecraft until I was 12 years old, because my parents thought it was too violent as you can kill cows and pigs in it.
• Written informed consent from the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

These are not arbitrary; they are crafted by developers who embed values within the digital experiences they create. This makes game developers modern-day storytellers and cultural architects whose creations shape the worldview and ethical compass of their audience. As a qualitative study of young people’s gaming through a reasonably large sample, our study is to our knowledge the first of its kind in Finland and provides important new insights into the subject. The responses suggest that many young people expressed themselves quite freely—something that might not have been possible in the social context of a face-to-face interview. By drawing on young people’s own experiences instead of using standardized quantitative measures, we have highlighted aspects of gaming that are essentially not measurable but are nevertheless integral to understanding it.

• Closely related to the previous dimension, Fun and free play1 addresses gaming for fun and playful experiences.
• Video game content creation can be seen as a form of labor, often discussed through the term playbour (Törhönen, 2021).
• However, many aspects of gaming sit outside the dichotomy of clearly beneficial or detrimental, light or dark, but are at the core of gaming nevertheless.
• Gaming is a common part of many young people’s social life (e.g., De Grove, 2014; Eklund and Roman, 2019; Bengtsson et al., 2021), and different aspects of social participation in gaming featured prominently in the data.
• The complex challenges to be solved to finish a video game help to develop cognitive skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and decision-making.
• Negative views on gaming did not typically influence the respondents’ play activities, but rather how openly they would discuss their gaming.

• From minimalistic pixel designs to billion-polygon environments, gaming demonstrates advancements in technology and storytelling.
• With the influx of virtual reality (VR) technology, learning experiences can be made much more immersive.
• Experiences of fun can be difficult to pinpoint exactly (Vahlo, 2018), and respondents described a wide variety of things that contributed to the fun, from immersion in game narratives to fooling around with friends while gaming.
• Despite the rich data, it was apparent that some respondents had only answered the assisting example questions rather than going beyond them, limiting their responses.
• Another prominent societal discourse that influenced engagement with gaming was the perceived hostility of game communities and gaming culture in general.
• While engaging with gaming culture, young people are constantly taking part in both its consumption and its production.
• As a qualitative study of young people’s gaming through a reasonably large sample, our study is to our knowledge the first of its kind in Finland and provides important new insights into the subject.
• Besides regional variations, this disparity illustrates the universal reach of mobile gaming.

Gaming can reduce stress, elevate mood and offer a form of social interaction for some players, acting as a valuable outlet for relaxation and self-expression. The connection between gaming and AI cuts both ways, as AI is becoming more integral to the video game experience. Some common uses of AI within gaming include altering in-game landscapes or changing the behavior of non-player characters (NPCs) based on human player decisions. Although the subject of problematic gaming was not very prominent in the data, mentions of occasional excessive gaming or unhealthy gaming habits featured in many responses.

Attitudes toward gaming and gaming cultures appear to be slowly shifting, yet seeing games in a very polarized way has a long history that still influences contemporary discourses about gaming (Rogers, 2013). Shaw (2010) notes that in media, gaming has been largely depicted as an undesirable activity, and likewise those playing video games (see Kowert et al., 2014). This goes hand in hand with how videogames have long been targeted by moral panics and viewed as a source of aggression, moral decay, and addiction (Rogers, 2013; Pasanen, 2017).

The closest analogue to this in gaming cultures are esports which are becoming both increasingly popular and more institutionalized in the vein of traditional sports (Brock, 2017; Scholz, 2019; Törhönen, 2021; Ruotsalainen, 2022). One respondent described both following esports and having esports streams on as “background noise” rather than something fully engaged with. Several respondents compared their experiences with games to other media such as books and movies. Echoing the notion of the active audience (see Behrenshausen, 2012), interactivity (see Christopher and Leuszler, 2023) was typically seen as the key difference. As discussed in the background section of this article, learning is often mentioned as an important gaming benefit, and the learning dimension was brought up by many of the respondents.

• Related to this, some respondents mentioned that they would like to have some more time for playing video games or that they used to have more time to play video games.
• The global gamification market reached a value of $14.5 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to nearly $48 billion by the end of the decade.
• Gamers demand realistic graphics, which require even more powerful graphics processing chips.
• The theory takes as its starting point that each individual has a different relationship with gaming, and an individual’s relationship with gaming develops, and is actively constructed, over a long period of time and is influenced by a variety of factors.
• Sometimes the act of playing games was a side activity, for example, watching television.
• This is the period when gaming transformed from a matter of technical curiosity to a consumer phenomenon.
• An interesting negative outcome of gaming skills for some respondents was that their high level ruled out potential people to game with.

Virtual Reality In Education

Hobbies, school, and work were mainly mentioned by respondents due to the time constraints they would introduce to playing video games. Related to this, some respondents mentioned that they would like to have some more time for playing video games or that they used to have more time to play video games. The changing rhythms of everyday life and engagements influenced how much the respondents spent time engaging with video games (see Apperley, 2010; Meriläinen, 2022). The questionnaire was targeted at 15–25-year-old Finnish speakers who played digital games.

More hostile forms of trolling are discussed under the subtheme Sociality, togetherness, and communality. 85% of US teens in a 2024 Pew Research Center study admitted to playing video games. Games, through their mechanics, narratives, and player interactions, develop complex systems of symbols and meanings. Terms like n00b and aggro, for example, shape the way gamers play and experience their digital communities. Gaming culture has evolved beyond entertainment and has become a medium through which values are conveyed and internalized by the younger generation. From simple pastimes, video games have become vital cultural forces shaping the future of entertainment, social life, technological innovation, and the very way we learn and interact with the world.