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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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I don't think these substitute for each other to any meaningful extent. An action movie buff is going to watch, what, like 5-15 action movies a year in theaters? Accounting for modern film runtimes and ticket prices, that's up to 45 hours and $225. 45 hours is nothing in terms of gaming, that'd be easy to cover within a single month. $225 is the equivalent of 3-4 AAA games, so there could be some substitution effect, but honestly, for most people with enough free time and money to be into playing AAA games, the equivalent of < $20/month doesn't seem likely to significantly influence decisions on this.

Anecdotally, the types of gamers who are most into the types of games where you can see explosions and gun fights also are most appreciative of action films. Which makes sense to me, since if you like explosions and gun fights, there's separate and complementary enjoyment from partaking in them in a video game and from watching professionals performing it at a high level. Playing as Nathan Drake hanging off a cargo plane is a poor substitute for watching Tom Cruise hanging off the outside of a real plane as it takes off.