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60% Of Kids Play Games Every Day
Next Generation has a piece up stating that, according to a JuniorSenior Research poll, something like 60% of all children play video games every day. From the article: "39% of the children polled said they were happy to pay a high price for games they especially wanted, and said they had saved up to buy a particular game. A third of children say their friends are the primary resource for information about new games, signaling the absolute importance of playground evangelists. Surprisingly a quarter of kids say advertising is a key source of information, while only 10% say they rely on TV shows."
So did anyone who answered this say that they got most of their gaming info off the internet? I, for one, have been getting my gaming news from online sites for about 7 or 8 years now, since I was a lad not much older then 8 or 9.
ditto. I remember I saved up for a $10 phone and a $5 extension lead. My mum freaked out cause she couldn't understand why a kid would want a phone in their bedroom. After I told her how hard I worked to get the $15 she caved. Couple of months later I heard about modems and managed to save $30 for a 1200/75 baud one for my C64. Now that phone line had a dual purpose. I used it for almost a year before I learnt the fun of scanning 1800 numbers. Telstra sent me a nasty letter which my mum rang up and complained about. "It's not abuse to ring a number that is free. If they don't want people ringing it then don't make it free! No it doesn't matter how many calls he made, it's the principle of the matter!" Unfortunately 6 months later I called a few too many STD numbers and racked up an $800 phone bill. I never got an allowance again.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well, for me at least, when i was younger, I usually saved up some of the money. Or waited until a birthday or something. Back in the NES days, when I was 8 or 9, how much did games run? $40 maybe? That was a lot of money for a kid. I remember having a chore chart where I earned my allowance, each chore was worth maybe 25 cents, if I did it all week. Say that averages out to 5 cents per chore each day, maybe 10-15 chores on the list. Working for 75 cents/day won't get you very much in the US.
Of course I was happy to pay that much for a game. I didn't have to spend my money on anything else. Now that I can earn enough for a new game in a couple hours, I've got about a zillion other things that I need to pay for. Ah, to be a child again...
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I don't see the point in mkaing useless surveys about how many children play videogames. Something of greater use would be how many of those kids are playing the M-rated ones not meant for them. Or better yet, how many kids have been negatively effected by the M-rated games? I don't see the point in conducting surveys like these when there is no real point to it. Give me some useful statistics and I'll give out better comments... what a waste of an article.