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Gaming In Sweden Bigger Than Football and Hockey
An anonymous reader writes "SIFO (a major Swedish survey company) has conducted a gaming survey right before the launch of Dreamhack Winter. One of the results is that gaming is bigger than football and hockey combined."
Nice to see we have some friendly competition for the coveted "Most Hours Spent Sitting on Our Arse" award. *looks around* Hmm. Why are all these people looking at me like I just ran over their dog? And at least four of them have pitchforks.
Well, I'm going for a walk!
*backs away slowly*
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It's easy to understand why. Have you ever tried kicking a football on skates?
-=Bang Bang=-
Is the day far when nerds and geeks will rule the high schools, bullying and terrorizing the jocks and athletes?
Who wants to be outside in cold wet weather physically exerting themselves when you can be toasty and lazy sitting on the couch?
Live forever, or die trying.
They are referring to actual football a.k.a. soccer.
There is also a wimpy other side of the atlantic "sport" called "american football" which just is a bad copy of rugby (which is much more brutal than american football since you dont wear any wimpy padding). Though, you are not actually kicking on the ball with your feet in american football, so why it is called football no one actually knows.
About 25% of my online society (Hunters-unlimited.com) is sweedish and uses those funny little dots in their words. Plus one or the games we play (entropiauniverse.com) is also sweedish, They are a pleasure to play with, speaking multiple languages (for the most part). With all that extra night time in the winter they keep our soc warm.
An urban legend my good man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Any mention of 'football' outside the US means proper football i.e. soccer. Noticing the report came from Sweden should have indicated which to most people i.e. not Americans who probably think Sweden is where re-made home videos come from.
Ironically most people think that soccer is an American term to refer to football, whereas it actually comes from the phrase 'association football'.
Maybe in 10 years the game of hockey will return to normal, and we won't have to worry about the prancing-through-the-daffodil-swedes wrecking our game with their pseudo-soccer-take-the-fall style of game.
I kid, I kid
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
I know it's popular to hate on American football because it's American, but the types of hits and tackles legal in the NFL would mean half a rugby team would be paralyzed by the end of the season.
Add to that, the plays of the NFL are much more intricate... the NFL is more of a tactical contest between coaches than probably any other professional sport.
What about triple-digits?
If you actually knew any history about football, you would know that the "foot" in "football" has absolutely zero to do with kicking. It has to do with the fact that it's played on foot, as opposed to other historical games that were played on horseback. Football's origins go back much further than any other modern sport (possibly as far as the last century BC), hence why the term "football" still applies, even though under the original broad definition, basketball and baseball would also qualify. Neither Soccer nor American Football is close to how "real" football was originally played in most places, that honor goes to Rugby. (Although both Soccer and American Football do have roots going back for enough, it's impossible to say *for sure* that there weren't certain places that played with similar rules. Rugby just most closely resembles the most popular form of the game.) The only significant thing American Football added that wasn't there since the beginning is downs, and a turnover or punt due to not being able to gain a certain amount of yards in a certain amount of downs (first put into place in 1882). Soccer changed the game altogether. Yes, American Football is just as close or closer to how the game was originally played than Soccer is.
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You should watch the Lions. The ball gets touched by a foot approximately every 3 plays.
Working out why this is so requires only a rudimentary knowledge of the rules of American football and the Lions record: 0-11.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You play the ball with the foot, all the time.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with why it's called football.
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Haven't they been following this same trend for a while? Heck, Star Craft is essentially a sport over in Korea.
Does this mean when Starcraft 2 comes out I will start seeing borkborkborks instead of just kekekes?
Slang abbreviation of the word "association".
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I know it's popular to hate on American football because it's American
I don't hate it because it's American, I hate it because it's boring. I actually tried watching it for a while and I found that it consists mostly of commercials, with short bursts of football in between. If they would just get on with playing instead of having constant advertisement filled breaks it might be more interesting.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
One answer... Bwahahahah!!! Half a rugby team paralyzed? That's seriously a joke. NFL players are over-pampered, overpaid wimps compared to the rest of the world. It's one of the few sports that somehow manages to encourage overweight athletes. Take a look at those guts and tell me again that they're in shape.
And yes, I am American, I played actual football, aka soccer. It has just as much physical contact, significantly more demanding on the body, and requires a huge amount of stamina. Do me a favor, go run for 45 minutes, take a 10 minute, and run for another 45 minutes. I'd love to see those NFL athletes have heart attacks over that one...
"The only constant in the universe is change." - Unknown author
Museums, it turns out, have much higher attendance in aggregate than professional sports. They have a much greater net economic impact than professional sports as well. A single headliner museum in a city can bring in a quarter of a billion dollars annually; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (an absolutely amazing place) was shown to bring in 369 million annually to the Boston area in a recent study. This is actually comparable to the annual revenue of the Red Sox; the net impact of the Red Sox on regional economy might be somewhat more, but there are a lot more comparable cultural institutions in Boston than there are comparable sports teams. You can walk across the street from the MFA to the Gardner, a smaller but equally culturally significant art museum. Boston is a famous sports town, but it is stuffed to the gills with cultural institutions that have heavy attendance every day (except possibly Mondays) year round.
I think one of the reasons for the outsize impact of cultural institutions is that they have a mission to have an impact. They're supposed to maximize bodies in the doors, eyeballs on the exhibits. Sports franchises aren't run that way. They're run to maximize profit.
Gaming's higher impact is likewise related to the fact you can do it every day. However it isn't going to have the same economic impact as having strong cultural institutions.
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Try playing both Rugby and American football and then comment. They are both physically tough, but in different ways. As for the padding, that is mostly aggressive. It allows you to hit (and be hit) harder. To say one is a wimpy form of the other is, well, flamebait.
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Rugby gets its name because it is as entertaining as receiving a rugburn.
Well, you know, a lot of the common ways one might receive a rug burn are well worth it...
Bow-ties are cool.
I know it's popular to hate on American football because it's American, but the types of hits and tackles legal in the NFL would mean half a rugby team would be paralyzed by the end of the season
I'm gonna have to call bull shit on that one. I have sneaking suspicion you never actually watched a professional rugby game before. There is little difference between the severity of the hits and tackles. In fact, I definitely see more blood and injuries with rugby. Also, the play doesn't always end when you get hit/tackled and rugby. American football players generally get a good 20 second rest. American football is pretty much rugby with much more resting.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
IAAARP (I am a American Rugby Player)
Rugby tackles can be just as hard however they typically aren't, why?
1) After a rugby tackle there isn't a whistle. There isn't a TV Time Out or a play clock. You either have to pick, ruck, or roll
2) There is no padding. NFL Players constantly use their padding as armor or a weapon. It's like saying I can hit people harder with a baseball bat than with my fist. No shit, there's less possibility of self damage with the baseball bat.
And your argument of "tactical contest between coaches" makes it sound more like a mindless game of chess. (Which I'm not arguing that it's not). Every single rugby player has to be able to make split second decisions and see the entire field.
Third, the type of game that Rugby is would leave most NFL players on the sidelines gasping for air.
1) NFL games are split up between 2 teams (Offense and Defense) that rotate out roughly every 4 plays. Rugby usually has 1-2 subs at most. Meaning all 15 players per team are on the field during the entire match.
2) NFL regulation matches are 4 quarters-15 minutes long. However this is usually spread out over 3ish hours. Rugby is 80 minutes spread out over roughly 90 minutes. (10 minute halftime).
Finally, I suggest you watch some stuff on youtube. There are plays and combinations that make the NFL look like tic-tac-toe.
You'll teach a bunch of Rugby players to play American Football much easier than vice versa.
Having high bodyfat does not necessarily translate to being out of shape. In most cases "fat" people are also in poor physical condition, but not always. I do crossfit-like training, and there's a guy at the training house I go to who has a distinct pot belly and will regularly outperform about 80% of the people who go there at just about any kind of exercise, whether it's heavy lifting or the brutal anaerobic endurance workouts we do. And it's not because the rest of the folks are all in crappy shape, either.
American football is pretty much rugby with much more resting
Watching American football and baseball always leaves me with the feeling that popular American sports are designed around frequent advert breaks.
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The gaming jock is the prom queen, you insensitive clod!
How many American Football players would be in the same position without their armour?
Agreed.
This shouldn't even be news. I wouldn't doubt if this was true for every country. If they did a survey in the US, I'd bet money they'd find more people play sports games than play sports.
Where's the statistic for how many people play games vs watch sports as their primary recreation?
How the hell is this insightful?
The summary says that playing computer games is more popular than playing soccer or hockey combined.
Don't forget about the fact that it's not really Football (seeing as you hold it with your hands most of the time).
Gaming is also cheap compared to attending a soccer event. The stadium entrance fee ranges from 50 to 100 Euros and you get 90 min of entertainment. A PS3 costs about 400 Euros (depending on the version) and a game sales at about 25 Euros (prices of course vary), which means that a PS3 and two new games is roughly like going 6 times to the soccer stadium, i.e. "buying" 9 hours of entertainment. With two PS3 games you can definitely spend a LOT more time than that, plus the fact that you will only buy the console once.
Well, with a population of ca. 157,000 (in 2005) and the fact that the suicides are listed by "suicides per 100,000 people per year", I think the fact that there is 0.0 male and 1.8 female suicides in 1987(!) - which basically means there was probably only one suicide in that year and it happened to be a woman - we can safely say: the data is insufficient to make a valid statement about the distribution.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Yeah,
Because doing anything for fun that isn't pushing the human body to new heights isn't worth doing.
If your not doing sit-ups while posting on Slashdot, then you should be arrested.
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.. because too many people can no longer even set foot on a tennis court without being out of breath we have substituted physical prowess in competition for mental reflex prowess. Pushing the human body to new heights is a sport, sitting on your ass in a chair isn't a sport. Counter Strike isn't a sport. Team Fortress 2 isn't a sport. It's a substitute activity for people either too fat or too lazy to go outside.
ANYONE HEALTHY PERSON CAUGHT PLAYING VIRTUAL TENNIS IN THE SUMMER SHOULD BE ARRESTED! ANYONE HEALTHY PERSON CAUGHT PLAYING VIRTUAL BOWLING ANY TIME OF THE YEAR SHOULD BE ARRESTED!
Go outside people.
I'll buy that argument as soon as ESPN stops calling NASCAR a sport.
I play one aerobic sport quite seriously (football aka soccer). I find that aerobic sports (and quasi-aerobic sports, such as volleyball) tend to be more fun to play. On the other hand, i find that they are generally rather dull to watch as the strategic intricacies are largely removed. You may talk about split-second strategic awareness that a rugby player might have and i could spill equivalent verbage about soccer. However, the reality is that while there is some sort of beauty about so many minds independently and in real time coming up with collective "brilliant" solutions to sports problems (such as scoring a goal or a try), such decisions are far less cerebral than those you get in american football and baseball.
Or, to put it another way, you typical rugby match on TV looks like a physical contest. The team that is fitter and more skillful usually wins. Or, rather, that's how it is for soccer and certainly that's how it looks on tv for ruggers. Real time "strategic" or tactical decisions in soccer are nearly nil. Who to substitute and what formation to play are mostly it. there are a few set pieces, but they are of secondary importance.
Baseball is a perfect strategic game. It's incredibly mathematical and lends itself to all sorts of analysis that is simply not possible in soccer. In soccer, "players working together" comes down i'd say 80% to personalities and at most 20% to complementary skills - such as having somebody with a good cross paired with somebody who is good in the air. In baseball, the situation is reversed. Sure, personality matters somewhat as it does in any sport, but players skills can be matched (both teammates and opponents) on far more levels. there are literally thousands of decisions that go into any baseball game that can be reviewed and discussed intelligently. In soccer there are maybe a handful.
So, I love soccer. I train 3 times per week on the pitch and gym most other days. But, other than picking up some ideas for my own game, I find it incredibly tedious to watch. Baseball and american football stimulate the intellect far more and builds far better dramatic finales because of this. Plus, the games are better structured. Maybe 3 televised soccer matches in 20 are still interesting and plausibly competitive in the last 5 minutes. I'd say at least 5-6 out of 20 baseball games and 13-14 american football games out of 20 could make similar claims.
If you want to talk about a slow national sport, look at baseball. The sport has immense history in the US, but it is painfully slow.
Here we invented a sport that lasts five days, and usually lose to the Australians at it.
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Those are the countries with a lot of failed attempts.
False.
There are three commercial breaks per period, for 30 seconds. 30 seconds. They are not taken while play is ongoing. They only occur after play stops due to a puck leaving the playing surface or a penalty (though not for icing). If no one is penalized (including offsides, puck leaving the playing surface / touching the netting), then it is very possible that the commercial break won't even be taken. They do not whistle play dead in the middle of it just to get a commercial in.
My guess is you just weren't paying very much attention.
That is a more or less accurate, but rather misleading summary. What you call "real" football was unruly mayhem. It wasn't an organised or codified sport. And the idea that it was called "football" because it was played on foot is plausible, but as far as I know is only a theory.
The first codified form of football was association football, which later was informally called "soccer" by the English upper-class college crowd (the term soccer was hated by the English lower-class because they thought it was a snobbish upper-class word; now they hate it because they think it is an American word).
From association football evolved rugby football (invented at Rugby University), which spread and evolved into American/Canadian/Australian football. Being a newer form of football, the rules for rugby weren't as well known or adhered to by the sailors who spread it, so local variations arose.
Association football was popular in the US, but the Americans then learnt the rugby style game from Canadian college students. The US Big Five ivy league colleges then voted on which form of the game to officially adopt, and it was 3-2 in favour of the rugby style. From there, American football grew to become the dominant form in the States, and soccer has been playing catch-up there ever since.
Man, this is like the old days in rec.sport.soccer, so I might as well dust off the old sig...
Alan Douglas
Soccer Guy/
For the record, soccer got its name from an abbreviation of one of the two football leagues created back in the split between football and rugby. Specifically, rugby was called League Football, and soccer was called Association Football. Association got shortened to Assoc., which then got bastardized to soccer.
While I can't definitely tell you what initiated the TV timeout, when I turned to my co-workers for an explanation they said it was a TV timeout. (Me, I am not a hockey fan and the tickets were free -- I just turned and said "WTF are they doing now??")
I'm sure there is some measurable rule which defines how it's done, it just wasn't obvious to me and I didn't know such a thing existed.
According to wiki:
Which, to me, reads kinda like the rules for Fizzbin. ;-)
All I'm saying is there are TV timeout in the game, likely even the three you detailed. Maybe not for every commercial break, but they do halt game play specifically for commercials at some points in the game.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
As the article says, the survey is about how many people participate in the sports and gaming. If you put it that way, probably more Americans play games than play basketball, more Japanese play games than play baseball. Not at all surprising.
But if someone says he's "in to football", chances are good that he's in to watching professional football, not playing it. Apparently only 3% of Swedes play hockey, but undoubtedly many many more watch it. I think even a lot of football fans would, if placed in front of a TV set, prefer to interact and be challenged by a game than passively watch a game. And either activity would be greatly preferred to actually going out and getting down in the dirt.
And nowhere does the article mention the amount of money spent on gaming vs. sports, and that's the conventional measure of how "big" something is. It's quite possible that gaming does take in more money, but probably not to the proportions reported here.