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Gaming is King of Online Entertainment
A study done by the market research firm Parks Associates shows that online games are the biggest draw for internet-based entertainment. Online games, including MMOGs, casual games, and free-to-play virtual worlds, had a bigger draw even that social networking sites or YouTube. Some 34% of US internet consumers played online games at least once a week in the second quarter of 2007. "Furthermore, the number of people playing games online seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. Parks' research found that the year-over-year growth rate for frequent online gamers was 79 percent, which easily trumps the growth rate for users of social networking (46 percent). That said, the growth rate for frequent users of video streaming sites was a whopping 123 percent, and that 'could pose a significant challenge to the gaming industry in capturing the online leisure time of Internet users,' Parks cautioned."
I'm willing to bet that once you add porn into the mix, the numbers change.
Well, I dont' know if "casual gaming" would be the right wording, since casual gameplay and MMOs aren't mutually exclusive. I know plenty of "casual" WoW players, who only play maybe a few hours a week. ;)
It's mostly just self-indulgence; masturbation by another name.
I piss off bigots.
It's the right word. Like so many words, it depends on the context it's being used. In the GP's post, it was used in the context of "games" and not a style of play in a MMO "game". Thus it means "Flash" games and not "people who play an MMO game less frequently than others".
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell