The gaming component of the media content: functional and typological models

The paper is devoted to the analysis of one of the most obvious features of modern global media - the increase in the volume of media content devoted to the description and demonstration of various entertainment events: sports competitions, royal weddings, rescue actions, beauty contests, etc. The audience of such shows has billions of interested viewers who are actively involved in the empathy of what they are shown on the screen. Another feature of the era is the social and media space filled with all sorts of games. The use of the game and its elements in non-game contexts (in the interests of business, to solve any personal or social problems) is called "gamification". The author has investigated the functions of the gaming component of modern media, proposed a new typology of media games (competence, manipulative, entertainment and gambling). The author's main conclusion is that at the present stage of historical development, both people themselves and games they use to solve their problems have changed. Modern people, at least those living in the so-called "first world", are characterized by the following features. On the one hand: 1) the relative education of people is growing; 2) their needs are developing - people need more and more now, and they want to achieve everything faster and faster; 3) people are increasingly striving to be able to make decisions on their own, without pressure from the outside; 4) people's self-esteem is growing; 5) the desire for new impressions is increasing: people tend to travel, they need new and constantly updated information; 6) personal mobility is growing, people stop holding on to one job, one place of residence, it is easier to change jobs and place of residence, easier to move; 7) the generation gap is increasing - between parents and children, between the older and the younger. On the other hand, the increasingly accelerating transformation of modern society forms a growing existential anxiety about one's place in a changing world in the mass consciousness. At the subjective, personal level, the above challenges are accompanied by mass experiences of stress. The consequence of these factors is the search for ways to relieve psychological tension. One of these ways is a game. Thus, paraphrasing K. Marx, we can say with a good reason that games have become a specific "opium for the people". This "drug" allows a person to fall out of the oppressive reality for a while, get a charge of fun and vivacity, and then with new forces return to the real world, which uses us for some of its purposes.

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