When I was growing up, my friends and I spent an awful lot of time gaming. In those days, that initially meant roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons or MERP, or tabletop war games like Renegade Legion: Centurion or BattleTech. By the time we got to university, we still gamed, but increasingly on computers, playing hot seat games like Warlords II or Robosport. Regardless of the game though, alcohol was a key accompaniment. If gaming had been less costly (in terms of opportunity costs), we would have done more gaming, and more drinking. Gaming and drinking were clearly complements.
Not any more it seems. According to this article in the Financial Times last month (paywalled):
Gaming, video streaming and social media have had a far bigger impact on alcohol consumption than Gen Z concerns over its effect on health, according to the head of one of the world’s largest brewers.
Atsushi Katsuki, chief executive of Japan’s Asahi, said “there’s no doubt” the rise of digital entertainment platforms had hit demand for his sector’s products far more than abstinence driven by concerns over the harmful impact of drinking.
“Alcohol used to occupy a much bigger share of people’s entertainment and joy,” he told the Financial Times. “In the past 10 years, the number of entertaining things has grown including gaming, so I believe alcohol’s share of fun, enjoyment and happiness has decreased.”
If drinking is something that consumers do instead of other entertainment options, rather than alongside other entertainment options, then alcohol has become a substitute, rather than a complement, for entertainment like gaming. That's what Katsuki appears to believe.
This change might be linked to changes in the way that people game, as much as changes in the way that people drink. This 2019 article (open access) found that low-level gaming is positively associated with problem drinking. So, for people engaging in low-level gaming, alcohol and gaming may be complements (and that was probably the case for my friends and I - gaming was primarily a social activity). That research also found that high-level gaming is negatively associated with problem drinking. So, for people engaging in high-level gaming, alcohol and gaming may be substitutes (high-level gamers don't drink and game).
So perhaps over time, as gamers have gradually become more serious about their gaming, more gamers fit into the high-level category than the low-level category. And observationally, more people are gaming than before. Taking those together, the overall population-level association between alcohol and gaming may have gradually switched from complement (people drinking and gaming together) to substitute (people drinking, or gaming, but not both).
And now that young people are viewing gaming and alcohol as substitutes, it appears that alcohol is losing out. It's no wonder that Asahi and other alcohol producers are worried.
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