Many Americans Cannot Go On Vacation, So They Play Video Games Instead
Image; مهدی بلوریان https://www.farsnews.ir/photo/13980606001205/
One of my favorite YouTube channels is Minecraft & Chill, where a calm British announcer describes what idealistic "seeds" a player can generate for the optimal playing experience. "Imagine if your Minecraft world had the perfect location for a castle, a cozy cabin, or even a secret village," the announcer says, tranquil music playing in the background.
Minecraft is "procedurally generated," meaning the world is entirely different whenever you load a new game. However, you can input a string of numbers called a seed to get a world with specific attributes. Minecraft & Chill is a channel that takes the guesswork out of finding a world to play in. The joy of the channel comes from imagining what kinds of bases you can build in these idyllic settings: what worlds you can travel to.
"It looks like a travel guide for people who cannot travel," my partner remarked one day as I watched it.
It's a comment that has stuck with me because I use video games as an outlet for travel, and when I look at my fellow gamers, I see many doing the same thing.
Travel can be expensive
I remember really wanting to travel during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was stuck in quarantine, repeating the same routine over and over again, and I wanted to get out of there. The hobby I retreated into to “scratch that travel itch” was video games. I played titles such as Inkle's brilliant 80 Days (2014) and Bethesda's less put-together Elder Scrolls Online (2014), which allowed me to simulate the experience of going to new, often fantastical locales.
Many Americans had the same itch because the lessening of COVID restrictions caused rates of travel to more or less return to pre-pandemic levels, and it's overwhelmingly leisure travel. Shannon Osaka wrote in The Washington Post in 2023: "…traveling for vacation and other leisure activities has increased to offset the number of meetings now occurring via Zoom and other platforms."
Yet, inflation has led many Americans to change the kinds of vacations they take, even as Americans' plans to travel have increased. A survey commissioned by Forbes shows that taking fewer trips, going on road trips instead of flights, traveling during the offseason, and staying at less luxurious accommodations are all “on the table” for many Americans as ways to cut expenses this travel season.
These budget strategies make sense, given that travel costs have decidedly increased over the years. According to the Consumer Price Index, airline tickets alone shot up by 25% last year. From the many fees adopted by airline companies (such as baggage fees) to the increase in food costs, it's simply more expensive to travel now.
In essence, the rise in travel costs has made vacations less glamorous as an act of necessity (unless you are rich, that is).
Video game prices are increasing as well—the cost of everything is rising in this capitalist hellscape. Game developers, like airlines and vacation rentals, are squeezing as many price hikes, fees, and additional transactions as they can, but the price of a virtual experience will always be less expensive than in-person travel. As Gieson Cacho writes in The Mercury News:
“Sometimes a European vacation isn’t in the cards. Budget constraints prevents that plane trip and lodging or family commitments means that one can’t leave home. When that happens, video games offer an answer. Many of them can transport players to a desired destination though it may not be a one-to-one reproduction. Some of those destinations may not be even real at all.”
If one cannot afford the costs of a "traditional" vacation, it makes sense that many people are taking virtual retreats instead.
Virtual travel can be more fun
Video games serve as a type of escapism. You can engross yourself in them far longer than your typical movie or even television show. A modern TV show has eight to twelve episodes per season. The Witcher 3 (2015) has 100+ hours of content.
The player's frame of reference is also different. Unlike a movie or show, where you are passively watching something from the viewpoint of a third-party observer, with a video game, you take on the frame as the person doing the action. You often are the person traveling and going on exciting adventures. "In just a few clicks," Amar Hussain argues in Nerd Bear, "you can be flying over mountains, traversing jungles, driving through the British countryside, or diving under the sea."
This trend has only intensified as video game developers have focused more and more on "immersion" in recent years, where the players feel like they are, at least in part, experiencing the fictional world of the game. As a result, video games make players feel at the center of this experience because that's what games are typically designed to do.
This is very different from real-life travel, which has increasingly become less fun. The lessening of COVID restrictions—and the subsidization of "cheap" travel by corporations and governments—has led to an overcrowding of traditional vacation spots. For example, one travel company's founder last year recommended not going to the typical Mediterranean hotspots, arguing:
“Not only because these top locales are overpriced, but they are overrun with Americans this year, compromising on the international flavor and ambiance you would ordinarily get in the Mediterranean.”
If you want to see the sights in real life, you will find them increasingly crowded with other Americans obscuring the view.
Additionally, even before the pandemic, there was a gentrifying element to travel where not only could a narrow slice of the population afford these Instagram-worthy vacation hotspots, but it inevitably changed the local landscape of the places where such vacationers were going. As Rebecca Jennings writes in Vox:
“In attempts to woo wealthy cool-seekers, developers design restaurants, hotels, and public spaces to look like facsimiles of the restaurants, hotels, and public spaces determined by Silicon Valley investors to be what cool people should want. A coffee shop in Beijing now can look the exact same as one in Buenos Aires and as one in your hometown. Our tourist dollars, after displacing innumerable families from neighborhoods they’ve occupied for generations, then turn those same neighborhoods into playgrounds specifically for us.”
Real-life travel contributes to displacement because capitalist firms value the housing and desires of vacationers over locals. You come for the "authentic" culture and, in the process, remove the people who make that culture possible.
But in a game, you don't have to worry about ethics at all — at least not directly. It's a simulated environment that allows you to "skip the line" for the best views, shops, and locales while not displacing real people in the process.
When society is this toxic, games' disconnection from the real world can arguably be read as a plus—at least, that’s what I used to tell myself.
A roaming conclusion
Out of a population of over 300 million people, only about 40 million flew outside of the US in 2023, and that is by no means a yearly occurrence for every one of those passengers. That's roughly 8% of the population. Traveling to glamorous locations is (and has historically been) a rich man's (or woman's) game.
On the other hand, video games are an activity for the masses. Most Americans play video games on a regular basis. If one survey by TechJury is to be believed, 60% of Americans play video games every day. In an age where mobile games are cheaper than ever, it's far easier to play a video game than plan that Instagram-worthy trip to Porto, Tokyo, or what have you.
And don’t get me wrong, I love video games and consider myself an avid gamer, but I do see a strange dysfunction with our collective retreat into said games. It's not something we are necessarily doing so frequently because we all hate travel and other in-person activities, but rather because they are becoming so unsustainable, harmful, and expensive that we are retreating to the fun (and atomization) of video games by default. People got really into gaming during the pandemic because their activities were limited, and finances, although not as all-encompassing for everyone as a plague, have created those same kinds of limitations for many.
I am glad that the era of “cheap” airplane travel is dying because it was never sustainable — either economically or financially — to lift and propel that many people into the atmosphere every day. Travel, as it’s currently structured, is wasteful and exploitative, and that is not okay.
Yet I do want to continue traveling, even if it's at a different level of opulence than our society has grown accustomed to. There are rituals that come with traveling that I enjoy, such as the joy of a friend showing you their favorite places or sharing your culture with others. There are people who I feel closer with because I visited them, and engaged in that exchange.
I worry that we will increasingly miss out on those experiences, and our only consolation prize will be a screen—one that we don’t necessarily like that much but certainly was on sale.