Oh, but the satisfaction of using your thumbs to get good head shot kills or make lines of candy explode is nowhere near as satisfying as using both hands to land some sweet tricks…and hands do not require wifi or charging.
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Sure, but trying convincing them of that… 
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Heck, a lot of these kids now don’t even play the video games, they’re content just watching someone else play.
Blows my mind. I never would have went to a friend’s house, be asked if I want to play video games, and reply with a “no, but it’d be cool if I could sit here and watch you play instead” lol
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I dunno man, there was a lot of sibling “taking turns” and watching of video games back in the day.
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I thought @shatterFX was referring to people who spend hours watching video game streams of something like League of Legends, rather than playing it.
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When we got Defender for our Atari 2600 in 1983 my little brother had to watch me until I turned the score over and then I watched him do the same. It was amazing…we could play our favorite arcade game at home.
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Yeah but waiting for your turn and being perfectly content to not play are a little different. Some old systems only could have two controllers, so playing the winner was the common course.
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This is a pretty common thing that comes up, but I’ll point out that video games were amazing and in full-swing during the last yoyo boom and it didn’t prevent people from yoyoing at all.
Video games are massively popular, but are a completely different thing. I think you can assign them the same amount of blame for people not yoyoing as youth sports, choir, homework, family obligations, and sleeping. These are all things that will interfere with someone yoyoing, but it’s not a zero sum game where someone is either a gamer or a yoyo player.
What it really boils down to is that this is a niche activity and some people are drawn to it while others are not. It’s no different than curling in that regard, except that curling is more popular. But people who are into curling don’t blame video games for the lack of curlers, they just understand that curling isn’t for everyone.
Yoyoing is a niche activity with broad appeal and a rich history. It can be more popular at times, but overall our gains as an industry will be predicated mostly on the slow, steady growth of the “serious” player base, the steady position as a “classic toy” that keeps it on shelves, and the occasional blip of public interest that moves enough units and brings in enough people to give us a wave of fresh interest and talent.
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You’re right. I did not look at it from that angle.
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I would suggest cells phones as a reason another boom wouldn’t happen, but fidget spinners took that point down.
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Well, I think it is (zero sum) in the sense that if a kid has free time to blow, they are more likely to blow it all on a video game, rather than spend any time practicing something like yoyo or a musical instrument.
Take for example the popularity of Guitar Hero (and its clones). That fad led many a parent to think their video-game-addicted child was a potential music prodigy, when in fact, the only thing Guitar Hero makes a kid good at is video gaming (it teaches nothing about music except rudimentary rhythm locking). The moment 99% of those kids discovered how hard the real thing was, they ditched it and went back to the video game where success was much easier and the reward centers of the brain were diddled with much greater frequency.
I think the same holds true for anything that requires lots of dexterity and lots of practice. Yes, video games require both, but not nearly to the same degree as yoyo or guitar, and the same relatively few actions are quickly embedded in muscle memory, making video game mastery trivial (and more quickly rewarding/addictive) by comparison.
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That cracked me up! Diddled. Diddled. Diddled. That was a great post and that line was funny. Diddled.
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I gotta say I was part of that generation blowing hours playing video games, cause really at that time all my friends were into games and that was the thing to do, I mean I was really into them too, I could waste hours with online shooters. The funny thing is though, that’s when I was learning tricks the most cause I just loved throwing and I really wanted to learn more. It was an obsession that none of my friends shared, but that was okay, I’d practice on my own time or actually in between turns on the system sometimes lol.
Although there are those kids out there that have serious problems with video game addiction, I’d say they’re in the minority. I think the biggest factor is if it’s something you develope a passion for, that moment I figured out that this is something I really enjoy doing, so I’m going to keep doing it. I have a young teenage cousin, he’s part of the young gaming generation too, but he also shreds on a skateboard, and plays sports, because he WANTS to, and at this point it’s part of his identity. To me there’s a difference in say the kid that wants to learn guitar because it looks cool or they’re friends are doing it, then give up when they realize it requires more effort/time than they cared to devote, and the kids that picks it up and it becomes a life long passion, they may not become rock stars or have to put it down to take care of responsibilities as adults, but I’ve known people like that, they’ll always have a guitar to play around with till the day they can’t or die.
Another big thing is exposure, using music as an example again there are a ton of artist, bands, music is everywhere so the likelihood of discovering a love for music is very high. Even me, if the crew of demonstrators never passed through my school who knows if I’d have ever picked it up. For me it was the SuperYo, and my first bearing yoyo was a SuperYo renegade, anyone remember the SuperYo kickin tricks? That was the match that lit the fire for me, it was the first time I saw guys like Steve brown and Doc Pop with his blue dyed hair, I was always an oddball with my own style and it wasn’t just the tricks but their style and personalities that resonated with me.
Nowadays with the age of social media and youtube I see some of exposure gaining traction beyond a quick fad. To me that is what is going to be one of the biggest tools to keeping throwing alive and healthy and exposing more people to seeing the possibilities of the crazy tricks that can be accomplished and also the entertainment value itself.
My girl for yet another example saw me watching Paul Kerbel’s 2017 world freestyle, there’s no denying the flare of his freestyle, and she goes on to tell me she had never thought of yo-yoing as something that could be entertaining to watch, that it wasn’t just someone playing but a performance like dancing or some other type of performance show, cause up until then I really kept what little throwing I was doing before getting back into it to myself, not cause I was embarrassed just cause it’s more of a personal hobby I take part in on my own time. Oh man time to cut this, I always say more than I intend to lol, cheers! 
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You didn’t say too much. That was a great read!
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Exactly. When 1% of kids find a passion for yoyoing that the other 99% don’t (and I think 1% is being generous), you end up with a hobby that remains excruciatingly niche. And I would still argue that a huge percentage of that 99% would rather play video games or fiddle with their social media apps all day as their “indoor activity” than take up something like yoyoing.
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Yeah I would say that’s a valid statement, I guess my thoughts are mainly deriving from my own personal experience, whether they played videos games or not they were never going to have an interest in it themselves, and also went on find passions of their own despite being gaming nerds. I was just lucky enough to have friends that never put me down or discouraged me despite their disinterest. I won’t lie either, as much as I was obsessed with gaming myself at one point, discovering girls pretty much snuffed that out quick LOL. “New ps3 what? Nah I need to buy new clothes, get a car and go party” never looked back Haha, but hey I still found time for yoyo 
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That’s a priority shift that pretty much steamrolls over all hobbies. The pursuit of girls will supplant video games and yoyos alike. But if you were able to summon the motivation to keep up with yoyos during that time, I’m sure that an equal number of kids from the other 99% found similar motivation to keep up with video games.
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Nah, jobs, Bills and time put the final nail in that coffin, but to your point distractions are more readily available now that it’s become more accessible and mainstream.
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my sides…
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