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Adults Love Video Games
flabbybuns writes "For those of you who feel you may waste too much time behind a controller fret no longer. According to a recent report on adult gamer statistics, it turns out that the adults are more hardcore about gaming than the kids are. "
I'm so sick and tired of TV and the media in general making out that games are just for kids. With the level of technology games currently have and the sheer joyful fun you can have with them, and the fact that this survey proves a lot of adults know this already it's about time the world at large accepted it.
Ya it is quite disturbing when you have this nice image of this girl char who is very nice in game then you get in on a vent channel and they sound like a 70 yr old smoker, who you then later find out its a 60 year old... damn retirement.
I too have a 5 year old. The problem for me has become the fact that I must wait to play my games after he goes to bed. Having to give up sleep to continue progressing on games is getting harder as I get older. Fortunately, I have a broad range of likes and can enjoy the games he likes (Lego Star Wars, Katamari Damacy). God, I hope he never discovers Poke-e-mon or Yu-gi-oh...
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
Whilst many people may use the "Adults have to work, kids don't" may I remind people that: . Adults have more disposable income than children, moreso if they're single. . Generally, Adults have stopped learning (unless you go to university), and thus, they have more time to game and less to study (as high school is a frantic time) . Adults have all resources available to buy these controversial games (GTA:SA uncensored, all new violent games) whilst children have to pirate or illegally obtain these new games to play them. I would have thought it was pretty obvious.
I think the average age of an adult has increased significantly. What's the definition of "adult"?
Is someone who's 25 but does nothing but go to work, then game until sleeping 5 days a week count as an adult? If they haven't changed their habits since they were in school then gaming til bedtime I'd be hesitant to call them an adult. Agewise, they're an adult, but something's missing...
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
From TFA ...about one-third of adult gamers spend ten hours or more playing video games per week. Compared to only eleven percent of teens, some have to wonder where we find the time.
I find it hard to believe there are more adults playing long hours of video games than teens. Compare that to a recent poll by Gamefaqs about their users age.
Admittedly, that is only a poll showing the age of the people using that site, but it seems to be a fairly accurate representation of the age demographics of video game players.
Duh!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Heck yeah. I play through my favorite levels in Jedi Academy with all the cheats enabled just to blow off steam.
Psychologically, (a geek who overanalyzes stuff?!) I think this helps me compensate for the lack of control I have in my life. The demands of work, home, marriage, etc. are all wiped away with a half an hour of tossing stormtroopers into the lava.
I'm part of a clan (www.ofclan.net) that is made up of only people over 30, we have members approaching 60. We play Enemy Territory, many play for several hours daily (the retired members can put in lots of time) and our main server is full every night of the week.
On April 1 we celebrate our first anniversary as a clan, our clan is non-skills based and is purely for the social aspect of the game. It is the social aspect that keeps the members coming back.
It is quite surprising how many older players there are, our server attracts them more since we announce we're the "Old Farts" in the server name, we have many of the players on TeamSpeak when they're playing and it is a great time.
One of the nice things about our servers is we don't allow swearing in the game chat (you can however swear your heart out on our TS server). We do this because many of the members have kids who play with us on the servers or have kids who watch them play.
We also have attempted to make the servers player friendly for newbs and those of all skill levels by limiting abilities.
I'm going to have to disagree with that statement.
While I do love Chess (And everyone and their brother should learn to play Go.) I really don't see the intrinsic intellectual value of Sudoku. Sudoku is quite similar to the children's game with the various shaped pegs that you have to fit into the corresponding holes on a board. It can be challenging, but ultimately it comes down to a process of elimination and time will solve just about any problem as long as you keep track of what you've tried.
I'll grant that your average FPS, MMORPG, and Platform game do almost nothing to improve your intellect and really they only improve response times. There is something to be said for a good quality RTS, Turn based strategy game, or the all but dead adventure game which forces you to think critically. And to a lesser extent even the classic "falling object puzzle" games. Certainly far more than watching movies and television.
Like any and all hobbies, moderation is the key.
This important study just released.
The real life of an average citizen is boring. News at Eleven.
If life were more engaging, if television wasn't full of garbage spewed out by unimaginative conglomerates these statistics would say something else.
But for now it just says games are better than nothing.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
When I was 16, I was an assistant clan leader for a very small (10 member) Rogue Spear clan. We had one member - the leader, in fact - who was over 20 (he was 28), and we referred to him as "old man."
Now 23, I'm among the younger in my WoW guild. The vast majority of our members are family men and women and many are parents. Instead of having 10% of our members legally adults, we have 60%. That's a hell of a change.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
I'm not sure if what you mean is that teens are more "hardcore" because 5x more of them play MMOs, or the other way around, but just in case:
Seriously, I fail to see what's so "hardcore" about a MMO. The fact of the matter is that in virtually any MMO you'll eventually go up in levels whether you have any skill and dedication or not.
I've met people who were top level, or within the last 10 levels, and hadn't yet even figured out the very basics like "pulling", "tanking", "kiting", or generally using elementary techniques for their class. Or that "no, intending to sell it for cash doesn't mean your priest can roll 'need' on plate armour". Unless they were power-levelled, I can't imagine how someone got to level 50+ without knowing how to pull or how to stun an enemy while they bandage, other than by doing the dumb thing repeatedly, getting killed, and going back at doing the same dumb thing some more.
Or I still fondly remember grouping with level people in COH which had ploughed through the segment where they deal with endurance (mana) drainers like the Malta Sappers or Carnie Ring Mistresses by sheer getting themselves and their group killed repeatedly, and _still_ hadn't figured who they need to kill first in a Malta or Carnie group. Or a fire tank who, _months_ after a major and well documented change to his class, still refused to believe that the change existed. He blamed group members, the random number generator, _anything_ except accept that, for example, the game has a hard-coded limit of maximum 17 enemies you can hold the aggro of. Or people who, by their own admission, had been permanently in XP-debt from being killed ever since they reached level 5. (Back in the day when XP debt started at level 5.) And some were even proud of it.
So, sure, you could "grind" day and night to be the first to level 60... and then be the first to get bored as the game guides you to the tarpit of "endgame content". But the fact is, a casual gamer will reach level 60 too. And even a completely unskilled and thoroughly incompetent player will also reach level 60 too. Sure, it might take a bit longer, but they'll get there too.
Heck, you don't even have to "farm" or craft. I know people who've played a tailor/enchanter and refused to use the auction house or advertise their services in populated areas completely. (Apparently going to Ironforge savagely lagged their computer.) Guess what? They got to level 60 just the same.
The fact is, modern MMOs are among the most casual-gamer-friendly games. Now a single-player game can throw a boss or level at you that just won't let you through unless you're in the top X% of players as skill goes. (Where X can even be 50%, but still, there's a threshhold.) But WoW, EQ2, COH and the like will just require enough time investment to get to any point you wish to get to. The time investment may be hideously large for some of the "endgame content" rewards, but it's still all there is to it.
So if I was to take that as the lone reason why teens play MMOs, I'd say then teens are _less_ hardcore than us old farts. That's youth nowadays for you. Back in my day... *ahem*
But I'll give you another better reason: MMOs cost less, and teens have less disposable income. So between convincing mom and dad to buy you, say, half a dozen single-player games per month to keep you reasonably busy with them, and getting a $13 a month subscriptions, guess which one is more affordable to a teen? Right. WoW is actually the _much_ more affordable way to get your time reasonably occupied by a game.
Doubly so for teenage females, who in a lot of cases aren't exactly pushed towards anything either scientific or computer-related by their parents. I'd imagine a lot have a harder time getting their parents to fork over the cash for computer games. So I can easily imagine one staying with a MMO instead if she got her parents to buy one.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
BBC's 2005 UK Gamer research shows quite different results.
U K_Games_Research_2005.pdf
http://open.bbc.co.uk/newmediaresearch/files/BBC_
In the UK, most gamers are young, and the percentage of gamers in each age group decreases for older age groups. Also, in all age groups, male gamers outnumber female gamers slightly.
I find it a bit hard to believe that the gaming culture in the US is drastically different from the UK one. I think the different results are mainly due to different research methodologies and different definitions of things such as "gamer". For example, the CES people got their survey results from teenagers via telephone, and adult results via Web-form survey. If somebody asked me how much I play face to face or over the telephone, I'd be more likely to understate how much I really play (because I'm kinda embarassed by how much I play games). I'd give a more truthful answer to a paper or a Web form.
The full report costs $499 USD. Without access to that it's kinda hard to judge how good or poor the study's research really was.