The author has an unusual water cooler. I pulled the viewership stats and well under two percent of the population watches "The Bachelor", so in somewhat more than 49 times out of 50, a water cooler discussion about legacy media would be met with "huh?".
According to some Google research, there are typically around eight million concurrent fortnite players, which implies for every two people watching The Bachelor, there are three people playing fortnite.
(Edited: I made a major math error in that Bachelor is a special weekly event, and those fortnite events pull more like 10M concurrent, whereas I was comparing regular gameplay numbers. So comparing "weekly special events" across media formats, its more like there's about five fortnite players for every two bachelor viewers.)
The odds of a water cooler conversation about "So... tilted towers, or the dusty divot?" are about 50% more likely to be successful than something Bachelor inspired like "So... Peter or Colton?"
(edit: actual number closer to 250% as per above edit. In summary you can ignore legacy media and just talk about modern video games when you're trying to socialize, especially if both parties are non-senior citizens)
I will say the pacing of the experience is kinda the same; about 99% waiting and listening to sizzle, and about 1% steak where its actually interesting.
> The odds of a water cooler conversation about "So... tilted towers, or the dusty divot?" are about 50% more likely to be successful than something Bachelor inspired like "So... Peter or Colton?"
You're assuming that Bachelor watchers and fornite players are randomly distributed across water coolers, when they clearly aren't. For instance: water cooler conversations about the Bachelor may typically be extremely successful because the only people who watch it are in environments with a concentration of other fans. There are lots of other variables at play.
IMHO, videogames aren't going to take over, they're just going further increase media fragmentation in certain demographic categories.
You'd also want to know recurring rates, 30-day unique numbers, and stuff like that... but even aside from all that...
Traditionally media product consumption is very age-stratified, with people time constraints and choices changing with phases of life.
Even historically pre-games, this would apply to the types of shows or movies, so the most popular teen show in the world may not dominate office chit-chat the same way the most popular-among-adults entertainment would, say Monday Night Football.
Now there are way more forms in play then there used to be. Fortnite is very new. Gaming participation among my age group (millennial) certain has changed with aging, as many of my former die-hard gamer friends no longer devote nearly as much attention to it, but have picked up "old person" habits like passively watching HGTV while doing household chores instead. Similarly, even now when I'm working with very gamer-heavy coworkers... it's not Fortnite.
So it's entirely possible for something to dominate in revenue and overall any-single-instance participation numbers yet be less relevant to the "mainstream" mid-20s-to-middle-aged conversation... It's also possible for that conversation to continue to fracture.
According to some Google research, there are typically around eight million concurrent fortnite players, which implies for every two people watching The Bachelor, there are three people playing fortnite.
(Edited: I made a major math error in that Bachelor is a special weekly event, and those fortnite events pull more like 10M concurrent, whereas I was comparing regular gameplay numbers. So comparing "weekly special events" across media formats, its more like there's about five fortnite players for every two bachelor viewers.)
The odds of a water cooler conversation about "So... tilted towers, or the dusty divot?" are about 50% more likely to be successful than something Bachelor inspired like "So... Peter or Colton?"
(edit: actual number closer to 250% as per above edit. In summary you can ignore legacy media and just talk about modern video games when you're trying to socialize, especially if both parties are non-senior citizens)
I will say the pacing of the experience is kinda the same; about 99% waiting and listening to sizzle, and about 1% steak where its actually interesting.