We Are All Gamers

One of the BBC's 'At-A-Glance' features talks about the realities of gaming in Britain, and it has some encouraging statistics for the industry's continued health. "The detailed project, called State of Play, profiled UK gamers and non-gamers from 6 to 65 and found that almost 60% played games. Of those, 48% are women and 100% of 6 to 10-year-olds play games ... The average age of the UK gamer is 28, perhaps much higher that one might expect. Unsurprisingly, those born in the 90s do not know life without games. Perhaps more unexpectedly, 51% of the 36 to 50s play games, and the figures are still rising. "

Comments

100% of kids?

[Kuukai]

A conclusion that says 100% of anyone does anything (aside from eat, sleep, and taxes) seems pretty low-resolution, even if it's restricted to a single country... I suppose "play games" is a low hurdle to clear, "play games once every few months at my cousin's" probably qualifies. If that's true, it seems like a bad idea to market based on this data...

Re:100% of kids?

[vague disclaimer]

100% of 6 to 10-year-olds play games

Children play games! More at 10.

Bogus Statistics?

[megrims]

100% of any group (which isn't defined by their compliance to a trend) doing anything seems unlikely.

Re:Bogus Statistics?

[Anonymous Coward]

100% of living humans breathe on a regular basis.

Re:Bogus Statistics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, only living humans, who are characterized by a specific activity, i.e. living, and all the actions that activity entails.

Old Guy With A Gun

[jschnell01]

Though the stats are pretty obvious when it comes to the younger age groups, it is very interesting to see the amount of older people that game. 51% of those between 36 and 50!!! Even by their generous rating system... that is alot of people that are plugged in to some form of gaming.

Re:Old Guy With A Gun

[Angry Toad]

Perhaps more unexpectedly, 51% of the 36 to 50s play games,

I'm in my early 40's and I've been gaming since I was twelve - that was when the first real electronic arcade games came out. I used to spend many an hour playing Space Invaders, Lunar Lander, etc etc and have know many people in my age group who did the same and have remained game players ever since.

Why would we stop doing what's fun just because of the calendar?

Personally I tend to think it's more of a bias in the age range of people doing games journalism that makes them find it surprising that we're gamers.

Ghosttown?

[Anonymous Coward]

..Frist psot?

Hellooooooooooo?

48% percent are women?

[thatoneguy_jm]

"Of those, 48% are women"

Clearly, I need to move to the UK.

The real statistics here are statistics.

[Doctor Ian]

I was surprised to see that, of the 100% of 6-10 year olds, only 48% were female when normally slightly over 50% of children are female. Suspecting bad stats, I checked out the last census:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pyramids/p ages/UK.asp

The figures are by no means unreasonable.

The page talking about "Heavy Use" is really a bit lame. Once a week, more than one device? That's quite subjective. I mean, if I took heroin once a week, you wouldn't exactly call me a "heavy drug user", would you?

The quiz/puzzle games coming top makes me a little suspicious. Maybe I'm too way hardcore or something, but these games never seem very popular. I once loitered in a games shop for about a year and they hardly sold. It seems unusual to me that this genre would crush the others.

It makes me think that, considering one of the game types is "PC/INTERNET", a lot of people have noted down great quizzes like "What harry potter pairing are you?" and "What did you do during the great livejournal outage of 2004?" and "Are you a tree?" and "Are you 53% gay?" as serious hardcore gaming.

I don't know why I wrote any of this.

Re:The real statistics here are statistics.

[Dan B.]

>> I mean, if I took heroin once a week, you wouldn't exactly call me a "heavy drug user", would you?

Yes, in fact, I would call anyone that used such a drug more than once a user, and once a week is heavy drug use of illicit drugs.

Re:The real statistics here are statistics.

[HD Webdev]

That's quite subjective. I mean, if I took heroin once a week, you wouldn't exactly call me a "heavy drug user", would you?

I would only call you that if you were a "junk food junkie".

For a certain value of "Gamer", anyway.

[iainl]

For the purposes of the study, this merely means "have played a game in the last 6 months". So bear in mind that means everyone who has launched Solitaire since May, everyone who has loaded Snake on their phone to see what it was, and so on.

I am Gamer hear me roar!

[Chadhulhu]

Hey, I believe it, I play RPG's and Board Games, play vid games.

Many of these are not games!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of what people consider to be 'games', are really Murder Simulators and Sex Simulators! How can training to become a sniper, one-man-army, pagan shaman, or dirty pervert be a meer game? These people should not be labled as gamers(one who games), but as psychopaths! And they should be treated as such!

Re:Many of these are not games!!!

[faloi]

Remember, one-man armies are bad! Armies of one are good!

Left out the word "video"

[hal2814]

This article is about VIDEO gamers. If my kids play Yahtzee (with the cup and paper scorepad like God intended), they're not considered gamers by this report. However, if they fire up some fancy-schmancy computerized version of Yahtzee, they are gamers here. What about players of Electronic Battleship or Electronic Stratego? Are those folks "gamers?" They're just playing a console that only plays one game and doesn't need a television to connect to.

Re:Left out the word "video"

[Chosen Reject]

To answer your question about battleship and stratego, I would recommend re-reading your first sentence.

Re:Left out the word "video"

[hal2814]

Ah, but Yahtzee doesn't have a built-in compter whereas the Electronic Battleship and Stratego games do. Their computer insides are probably about as sophisticated as a Tiger handheld. Does that qualify? I imagine they count the Tiger handhelds in the definition of gamer. A game like Electronic Battleship (or even something like Simon) is certainly a grey area.

Re:Left out the word "video"

[hal2814]

Also forgot to mention that both Electronic Battleship and Electronic Stratego have video displays (though they are quite rudimentary).

Not so suprising

[el_womble]

As a Brit I've definately seen a change in the people around me, but I'd say its got a lot to do with the types of games that people play. Halo 2 and Doom 3 may appeal to the traditional gamer, but its games like Buzz, Trivial Pursuit and Pop Idol that non-gamers are playing.

This year my parents are buying a PS2 as a board game replacement. My sister (who is a complete technophobe) was telling me which games to play,( she was recommening ER) and my other sister was counting down the minutes until Monkey Ball was release for the PS2 (I haven't been that excited about a games release since Starfox).

I've also got a sneaky suspision that my girlfriend is buying me a console for christmas. As grateful as I'll be, I know it's because the last 3 girls night outs that she's been on have all centered around singing games and drink monkey ball - the irony: as soon as I mention that I'd quite like to get a few of guys around for a Halo 2 lan party she laughs her head off and calls us "stupid boys".

In the mean time, my game guru shroud has been perminantly revoked. I don't understand what they see in these short, family fun games any more than they get from running around yet another 3D maze getting my ass kicked by a 13 year virgin. Its a different world out there!