[tomxtr]

When I was growing up, a lot of parents didn't want their kids sitting in front of the tv in a vegetative state playing video games. This was an entirely foreign concept. They actually encouraged their kids to go outside and play as they did growing up. Personally, I can remember leaving the house in the summer after breakfast and only coming back in to eat. We would play baseball, football, ride bikes, build forts, all that good shit. That's not to say that kids weren't into video games. They just weren't as widely accepted or available for that matter. I can remember atari and intellivision and that's it. However, kids would hang out at the arcades feeding their life savings into games like qbert and galaga.

Now, the kids who grew up at the beginning of the video game era are the parents and don't think twice about buying video games for kids. I think this is the simple explanation. The internet and on-line gaming doesn't hurt either. I think the economy and 9/11 might be a stretch.