Sadly (IMO -- I'm a big fan of thoughtful, beautiful games like The Witness and Outer Wilds), at least at the moment the videogame industry is actually kind of in recession -- contra your assumption of long-term growth, actually over the short term of the past couple years, people are spending LESS time playing videogames. Part of the reason is seemingly that traditional videogames are actually pretty complicated (there's a lot of friction involved in learning how a new game works, or even just waiting to start up a console and launch a game, and games themselves take many hours). Meanwhile, right there on your phone are things like tiktok videos, sports-betting apps, assorted types of pornography, streaming TV shows and youtube channels, etc -- these quick dopamine hits perhaps seem to be outcompeting videogames, per this article: https://kotaku.com/why-the-video-game-industry-is-dying-2000671338
I guess I'd considered social media to still be part of the broader "game" concept intended by this post. A lot of social media is a social game, doing something with no intrinsic value in order to gain status and feel accomplished.
TV and streaming is kind of a slightly different but overlapping thing. Something that makes you feel stimulated while not actually producing any material benefits. Doesn't have the "gaining status and feeling accomplished" parts, unless you including feeling knowledgable, and gaining pop-culture knowledge to potentially increase social status.
IMO video games will be an especially important activity in the future, because they can be about almost any topic, use up barely any real world resources, allow multiplayer across a large distance, and do not place real-world players in physical danger.
Even in a transhumanist future where there are nanobots able to build ~virtually anything IRL for ~free, there will be certain kinds of IRL games (think far future versions of escape rooms) that you can't safely do, and even if you can, you still have to travel to the venue.
But with an immersive video game you can get almost the same experience safely and instantly, and even across the planet with other players if you're willing to deal with some ping (ironically the one thing we'll never be able to solve in video games).
But many other human activities can in some senses be seen as being forms of gaming - in the sense that they are activities that lead to dubious material benefits, but allow people to gain status and feel accomplished.
Not all gaming is for the purpose of allowing people to gain status and feel accomplished. There are competitive players and casual players; gaming is similar to other hobbies in that regard. Some people want to "climb the ranks" in that hobby per se, whereas others just want the experience.
Some people even believe superintelligence actually happened a long time ago, and what we experience now is actually a simulated video game reality, designed to keep us entertained.
If that were true, I'd be really curious about what the moral views of these game developers are, because IRL would be one heck of a cruel video game.
Well, if Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun is correct it will be a lot of drugs and orgies. Which seems more realistic to me than games because most people are really lazy and want the dopamine without the effort. So just slam the dopamine button as hard as possible as often as possible.
Orgies are harder than gaming. Multi-agent coordination with the risk of psychological harm, tricky group dynamic things, competetive dynamics and slower iteration.
Surprised you say "without the effort"
One hot topic of conversation right now is “What are all the humans going to do when AI plus humanoid robotics becomes better at everything?”.
As William Gibson famously said “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed”. So it’s worth looking at what activities are already taking up excess human time, allowing humans to form status hierarchies, and satisfying the human need to feel like they are accomplishing something.
One of those activities is video games, which continue to take up an increasing fraction of people’s time. But many other human activities can in some senses be seen as being forms of gaming - in the sense that they are activities that lead to dubious material benefits, but allow people to gain status and feel accomplished. This includes a large fraction of academia (definitely not all), the art world, sports, and yes, blogging.
Some people even believe superintelligence actually happened a long time ago, and what we experience now is actually a simulated video game reality, designed to keep us entertained.