63% of Gen Z Would Rather Play Video Games Than Watch a Movie

Games are interactive, movies are passive. Makes sense to me.

Also, there's the cost and community aspect of games. For the price of a movie ticket and popcorn, I can buy a game that I can play with friends for easily dozens of hours instead of us silently sitting next to each other for an hour or two.
With the increasing death of third places and the increasing cost of existing outside, video games have become their own sort of third place for people to get together and just hang out.
And there are some games which are basically interactive movies, e.g. Last of Us and Life is Strange

I'd still rather play video games than watch a movie, and I'm in my 40s.

I'm rapidly approaching 40, but I'm there too.
Most "normal" people see watching a movie or playing a game as a passive experience, you're "doing nothing."
For me that couldn't be more wrong. I almost never "just" watch a movie or show, that's wayyyy too passive for me. Playing a game is engaging, you may not be physically running around, but you absolutely are "doing something."
- That's what I've been saying for years. It's an entirely different activity that happens to involve blankly staring at a screen

I'm a millennial but same.

Movies suck ass right now. And honestly videogames too.

Videogames have replay value though so I can stick to the good ones from the past.

Movies have rewatch value up to a point.

Make a movie we want to see and we'll watch it.

A lot of AAA games may suck right now but there's so many awesome indie games that it's hard to care.
To me it's even simpler than that. Games are by design more engaging than movies, so I chose to play games.
I wouldn’t even say that movies suck right now, I just have a hard time giving attention to something for 2hrs straight with no form of interactivity.

I've never been a movie person, always preferred video games. Besides, many video games are like movies these days, but you interact with them.

About to turn 51. Same.

I mean, games are like interactive movies now. RDR2? Cyberpunk 2077? They’re great fiction and you get to be the main character. I was never a gamer, I would play here and there but could never play more than like an hour a day. Now? Especially the two games I mentioned, it blew my mind how much I could play those games. They’re excellent pieces of media.
- Hell yeah. And we get to shape our own stories this way. Game writing is different than movie writing. We get to express values.
- Have you tried kingdom come deliverance?

What's the max age of someone in Gen Z? Because when I was a kid, this was definitely true for me too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Z
27
- OK, that's a little old to be playing so many video games
Gen Z's are people born between 1997-2012. So the oldest Gen Z is now 27 years old.

I love video games but I also really love film. I went from playing Silent Hill games to watching films like Jacob's Ladder, Lost Highway, and Session 9. I've been watching a lot more films lately. David Lynch is one of my favorite filmmakers right now. I guess most of my life I was watching the wrong films. Even today lots of great films are still being made, you just need to wade through lots of shit to find it. For every great film, there's probably 10 shitty cash grabs. Cough, cough Minecraft Movie.

I wonder if this might be related to the idea that modern media consumption habits are potentially trashing people's attention spans

No, it is just human nature to want to do things they find more engaging. For most people games are more engaging than movies which are more engaging that books. Younger people are just more likely to have experience with all three.
- I'm not sure it can just be that though, millennials have experience of all three too, why does the trend apparently exclude them?
  I will sometimes pick a game, sometimes a movie, sometimes a book—all can be equally engaging IMO
- Yeah. Its immediate gratification.
  You can get into a cod or fortnite game in less than five minutes from boot to boots on the ground. You can get into a fight in an open world game in even less time. And so forth.
  If you aren't into the (delightful) love story? The (extended cut) Fall Guy is 20 minutes to the first stunt and about 45 minutes to the first fight scene. Personally? I think the movie would have benefited from even more time with Ryan Gosling just crying to some t swizzle in the car but it (like Drive, another spectacular Gosling film that nobody but me likes) was marketed as an action movie and people are going to just take out their phones or their gameboys if you make them wait that long.
  Its similar logic to "I don't have time to watch a 90 minute movie tonight. So instead I'll watch six episodes of a tv show"

Can confirm. They just leave the room. Even if they are half way in.

Even when I watch something there is a game open in my hands or on another screen.

It will change, believe me. I have less and less energy to play video games each year.

Not all video games are twitch shooters.
I'm almost 60 and I play almost every day.
Peak millenial spotted. It gets better once you get older I was told lol

Millennials grew up with some pretty awesome movies. Gen Z and Alpha grew up with some pretty awesome video games. Makes sense.

Gen X grew up with awesome movies and games...
- Damn right. And music.
- We had good original games growing up, but modern games are designed to be meth-adjacent levels of fun for kids.