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Gamer Behavior Categorized
Vodoo Extreme has the results from a recent study that looks into the spending and playing habits of gamers. From the article: "Gamers spend more than $700 a year: $341 on console titles, $233 on PC games and another $140 for accessories."
IGN pulls a poll and Slashdot reports it as a 'study'.
And probably about $300 worth of subscription costs to several MMO games. Man, they should find a way to combine those "get paid to surf" programs with MMOGs so that some gamers can at least afford rent after they pay their monthly game tax.
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Or maybe thats honestly what people pay. It's only 14 a year, but that's more than one a month. Given the wild success the original halflife (and its mods) still enjoys, at least some empirical evidence exists in favor of the "averages gamers sit on their ass less than McKinney83" theory.
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Open Source Sysadmin
If gamers use games as their main source of entertainment, $700 isn't so bad. It is easy to spend that much just on a cable TV subscription.
Of course, it would be better to spend a little less and save that money, but, hey, Social Security will still be there...right?
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
You can BUY games?? where?
14 RPGs/year = ~1400 hours of gameplay/year = ~58 days spent on gaming/year.
If a gamer also works a total of about 83 days/year, sleeps another 121 day/year, and spends 20 days watching TV, then there are 365 - 58 - 83 - 121 - 20 = 83 days left for experiencing real life. Unfortunately, another 40 of those days are spent in the bathroom or eating, leaving only 43 days to do the laundry, yardwork, house cleaning, errands, and finances. Oops, I forgot to mention the family!
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Based on this, I'd say it's pretty clear that teens and college students are overrepresented in the survey relative to the true gaming population. I don't know anyone in their mid-20's or older who can come close to averaging 20 hours a week. At the same time, nearly every male I know that's my age games on a reasonably frequent basis. So I'm guessing not many of them responded to this poll.
This would've been more helpful if they'd have published an age breakdown of survey respondents. I think it'd be interesting to know, for example, how many hours per week 25+ year olds can play.
My userid is prime!
Excerpt from the article adjusted for the real world:
Gamers spend more than $200 a year: $100 on blank media for console titles, $100 on blank media for PC games, and another $30 for labels, sharpies and cd sleeves.
Heh.
Eh.
If I were a publisher (a big one, EA, Activision...) instead of bitchin' about how much it costs to make 15 average games a year, I'd slice that release number by 2/3, make 5 or so kick ass games a year (for all platforms combined) and save the money I didn't spend on the other 10 crappers for stoking a hot fire on a cold night.
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Gamers spend more than $700 a year: $341 on console titles, $233 on PC games and another $140 for accessories.
Jeez I hope I don't go over my limit...
...and they could cut that in half if they were patient. Wait a few months for a price drop. Hell, wait a year for something to hit the bargain bin. The games aren't gonna disappear if you don't buy them right away.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
I think there's something interesting in this:
- --Q------R- -----H------I------JE
There should be multi-dimensional spread;
X=% of Discretionary spending spent on tech:
Y=% of tech spending spent on games:
100%--S------T------U------V
75%---O------P---
50%---K------L------M------N
25%---G
0%A---B------C------D------
0%----25%---50%---75%---100%+
I'll just list the fun ones; feel free to fill in the others:
A(0%,0%) - Has no worldly possesions and spends zero money on tech or games: Monk, Dedicated amish
D(75%,0) - You have a giant entertainment system, nice car, possibly the latest GQ. You think games are for kids.
E(100%,0) - If this is even possible.. you're a megalomanic scientist who seeks to take over the world by working in your lab to build a giant robot. Or you built a robo-hooker and maintinence costs you everything.
K(50%, 25%) - Typical slashdot reader? (more into tech than games, but buys some games)
N(100%,50%) - You live at home and you have all game systems. Your mid level stereo bothers your parents.
O(25%, 75%) - You have every game system but you play it all on your late 90's 27" TV.
S(25%, 100%+) - The EB Games clerks within 40 miles of you know you by name. People keep telling you to by an HD set but you aren't willing to put up the bucks.
T(50%,100%) - Not only do you subscribe to most known MMORPGS, you try to play your new game on your console while waiting for the mobs. EB Games and GameStop employees are told to call you to get you to buy their games.
V(100%, 100%) - You are either the largest spoiled brat on earth, buying only the newest game every day to play at your palatial mansion; You have a casino credit line at all game stores. All your non-game stuff is probably paid for (you have to have something to play all your games on. You wonder what it might be like to work a day in your life, but then you go back to playing again.
Ok I think I've wasted enough time on this psycho-silly-nerdy comment.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Nintendo, back in the NES days, used to restrict how many titles licensees could release a year basically to enforce this business model.
She Who Must Be Obeyed
Firefox comes with an Urban Dictionary quicksearch. Type "slang foo" to get a definition of "foo".
"There are hundreds of game theorists at the gates, sir, and they want to hold an election!"
Or alternatively, they did it to uphold their monopoly.
i pedia.org/wiki/Nintendo
That's what the Wikipedia article suggests anyway, and I find it much more believable if the other things mentioned are true: orchestrating shortages, antitrust and only starting to put quality over quantity because they didn't have enough resources to manufacture lots of games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NES
http://en.wik
By polling their own users, IGN are more likely to get hardcore gamer results rather than the average gamer, therefore it can't really be counted as a study
A better study would maybe be a questionaire inside Gran Turismo 4 or another game that will be widely sold , so it would not be affected as much by gender, genre liking, age etc.
Business Voyeur
PC Gamers spend a little more than that... $200 for 10,000 RPM Hard drive. $500 for latest video card. $300 for the newest RAM. $1000 for the latest CPU. $200 for a motherboard. Etc. Repeat every 18-24 months.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
Go read Game Over by David Sheff. It's quite a bit better than the information provided in the current Wikipedia articles, which frankly reads like an "urban legend" version of events. The titles per year restriction was instated long before the chip shortage, as a reaction to how Atari managed to bust the market by flooding it with low-quality games in 1983 and 1984. Nintendo used the restriction as a selling point with early retailers who were skeptical of the NES.
It's obvious that Nintendo eventually parlayed this tactic into a strategy to enforce their hold on the market, but arguing that Nintendo did it purely to enforce their monopoly is simply not correct. It's also worth noting that it has been long since proven that Nintendo did not orchestrate the chip shortage, although they had some unfair sway over who got chips and who didn't; the chip shortage is a well-documented event that cause big impact in electronics industries in that particular year. However, Nintendo did some things that intensified the shortage's impact on video games in particular, such as turning down any alternate source of chips that wasn't from a Japanese manufacturer.
As for the antitrust actions, they were tainted from the beginning by a questionable influence from Atari, whose business practices regarding Nintendo had been declared illegal several times in civil courts. Most notably, Nintendo had no direct representation at the meetings that lead up to the antitrust hearings, but Atari did... frankly, I think this questionable motivation on Atari's part is why Nintendo ended up getting a mere slap on the wrist, even though some of their business practices at the time were rather monopolistic. Any harsher ruling would've prompted counter-action from Nintendo regarding Atari's role in events.
This is an interesting question. How much do I spend on games a year. I bet the majority of my money is spent on renting games rather than buying them.
Some games aren't worth keeping after you beat them. Some games look good but don't have enough variety to keep you interested. There are a ton of games out there I'd rather not own.
Renting games is a good way to keep the costs down. Now if only Gamefly would build another distribution center near me, I'd be all set.
Go Gusties
So in other words, half as much as smokers. And we have a lot more fun with what we buy. Is this even newsworthy?
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