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Study Finds That "Extreme Gamers" Play 48 Hours a Week
An anonymous reader writes "Think you're a big gamer? According to a new study from market research firm NPD Group, to be considered among the real hardcore you'll need to play an average of 48.5 hours a week — nearly seven hours a day. This group of gamers is, on average, '29 years old, and — perhaps surprisingly — one-third of them are female. They're more likely to play on consoles than on the PC, and on average they've purchased 24 titles in the past three months — a bill that could easily run over a thousand dollars. But dedicated though they may be, the Extreme Gamers are just a small minority: a mere 4% of the US's 174-million-strong gaming public. '"
Amateurs.
There haven't been 24 games released in the past 3 months worth playing for 7 hours. Let alone 7 hours a day.
Pff sissies, I play that every day.
I have a few friends that play games this much. On consoles. The thing is, however, that it doesnt make them good. Console players IME tend to have a lot less 'skill'; ie- twitch reflexes and battlefield awareness.
Moral of the story, play PC games if you want to have a challenge. Consoles are fun if you like games with stories.
I didn't do that everyday, but I do recall one 10 hour session on Manic Miner in the 80's sometime...
Task Mangler
8 hours work, 8 hours gaming, 6 hours sleep (many could live on much less) leaving two hours for other stuff -- plenty of time. Remember that you can eat while working and playing games.
The article doesn't look like it says, although I only skimmed. I spent several months unemployed last year and I'd easily hit 40 hours a week playing video games, frequently more. It was shameful, but that's the way it was. When you're living hand-to-mouth for months on end, utterly sapped of any energy or confidence to do anything meaningful, video games are a way to kill time.
If they hold down a job I don't know whether to be concerned or impressed. If they're "homemakers" then it's no big deal. If they're unemployed I'm disappointed you needed a survey to figure that out.
Sleep mostly, hardcore gamers can have a life, i know amazing. But yeah. Sleep usually gets the axe. After a while you learn and adapt. Not before long you move through life in a sort of haze between sleep and being awake. You learn to control your body's urges and can keep awake for as much as you want or fall asleep on the spot.
>>Only 48 hours? Why thats only 7ish hours a day. Thats barely enough to run heroic instances.
Nice.
What's really sad is that the average American consumes 30 hours of TV and radio per week, but is considered perfectly normal. (http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051227/news_lz1n27list.html)
Oh, and the same people rotting their brains out watching American Idol are the people who claim gamers are wasting their time playing the games. I can't recall how many times I've been told by couch potatoes that "there's no way they'd be able to spend that much time in front of a computer every day". WTF do they think their flat screen is?? Sigh.
What I found most interesting was the methodology section which reads:
I guess the most obvious way in which error could slip in is via the on-line nature of the survey - possibly their weighting forumla could use some tweaking too?
WTF do they think their flat screen is??
A waste of a perfectly good computer monitor?
Amateurs.
No not really, I am in one of the top Warcraft Guilds and have been so since MC was the dungeon to raid (which I wear with pride) but at the same time, playing for about 40 hours a week has just gotten too much. I can totally corroborate that article.
To be in a guild like ours, you are expected to attend 4-5 raid nights a week, which generally last 3-5 hours. That's pure raid time though, so add a half hour before that to stock up on consumables, ensure that gear is enchanted/gemmed and that sort of thing. Then of course you need some time to make some cash to buy all this stuff, so generally add in at least a half hour a day for dailies - an hour if you want to do a random daily and get the extra badgers.
Oh yeah, then add in time for ALT runs, or weekend (our guild doesn't do official raids on Friday/Saturday night) booze runs, and that's another good few hours (drunken runs take the longest - but are generally most fun) and soon, you are very very easily up to around that 40 hour week or more.
For me, it just got to be too much time. I don't enjoy playing unless it's at the pointy end of the spectrum, so I have pretty much given it away. I still log on now and again to keep in touch, chat and have a giggle, but it's amazing how much time in your life you get back when you stop a schedule like that.
FYI, I chose to stop that raid schedule when I was struggling to wake up each morning (I work Mon-Fri and leave home at 7am) and it was becoming increasingly hard to wake up on time (read: started being late 2-3 times a week) after finishing raids at midnight or later. For me, the maths was really easy - raid and have fun with online friends or keep steady well paying job.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
If the study is only done in the US, then I don't think it do the name "Extreme Gamers" justice. Come to Asia, hell, go to Korea's "internet cafes", and you will find people who never leave the place. There are a lot more local mmorpg games here than there are in the States, and those are the type of games that suck your life away. And they are all PC games too, which will debunk the more console than pc claim.
What I don't understand is the amount of shit I used to get for sitting in front of a computer/playing Xbox Live for hours on end when doing that is at least interactive. When you sit and watch TV, you just consume, you don't input anything at all. Personally, I hate most things on TV.
What exactly do you mean by life?
A hobby?
Social interaction?
As sad as it might seem to some, not everybody needs to spend several hours/evenings every week with friends "down at the pub" or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
For me, the maths was really easy - raid and have fun with online friends or keep steady well paying job.
I'm glad you made the healthy choice. It's fun to just let yourself disappear into a game like WoW, but eventually you have to come out the other side. I've done the 60+ hours a week thing, I'm now down to something like 5-10 hours a week, mostly on the weekends.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Whatever n00bs, this whole "I have few friends" thread is lame.
I was there too, except I was one of the idiots trying to wrangle 39 other idiots (read: guild officer). At the time I had just graduated from high school and due to a traumatic experience or two (not what you think but too long to detail) I staunchly refused to attend post-secondary or any other school-like institution. So I spent 8-12 hours a day on WoW, building my toon up and helping to run a whole guild instead. Surprisingly it was pretty good management training. In any case, we did the whole "best guild on server, #1 in MC, BWL, AQ40, Naxx, etc" thing, climbed into the top 100 NA guilds at one point, and shortly before the first expansion hit I had burnt out. I quit pretty much cold turkey and with some help from my parents and my now girlfriend, i've never been back. I feel like i've conquered the essence of that game and any new attempts would just be the same shit in a new pile. Now i've got something MUCH more challenging to worry about: University. :)
Anyways, just wanted to say that there are probably almost as many ex-WoW addicts as there are current ones. Coca^H^H^H^H WoW's a hell of a drug.
FTFY.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
FYI, I chose to stop that raid schedule when I was struggling to wake up each morning....
I chose to stop when I realised the smell I complained about to my landlord was me.
But dude, they are about to release a new expansion!
Yes, this is how I can afford to be a PC gamer. I work 9 hours a day, another 1.5 hours traveling, I play between 4 and 1 hours a night depending on what else I have on (guitar practice, gym, pub). On the Weekends I can play up to 14 hours a day between other things (meals, going out, shopping, etc...). I normally get 6-8 hours a day of sleep unless a new CIV has been released in the previous 2 months.
Currently posting from Thailand, 6000 KMs from my gaming boxen and most of my games. I will spend this time drinking, eating, carousing and other stuff one does on holiday. I'll be here for another 3 weeks. My laptop is really just for banking and browing the web, it has an Intel IGM so it wont play any recent games (cant even handle CIV).
Many people find a balance. Someone who spends 4 hours gaming per night is no different to those who spend 4 hours watching TV, playing cards or working on their car.
I dont watch TV so this may be where I'm getting all this time from.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Heres why i'm hardcore:
-The only time I stop playing my game is when not doing so would be to the permanent detriment to my gaming environment. This means times when Its absolutley necessary for me to go pay rent, to go get food, to go to sleep. Things that, if not taken care of, would stop me from playing.
-When i'm sleeping, i'm dreaming about my game. Often I post suggestions I dreamed up in the game's forums the next morning.
-I'm obsessed. When I physically cant play the game, I research the game, and do the math to figure out what would work better how.
All in all this means I play my game about 18 hours a day. Thats right, 18 goddamn hours. I sleep for the other 6.
I'm really, really starting to think that theres something wrong with me. But this is what I am- hardcore- theres no denying that. By the way, I play anarchy online, the heroin of mmos.
I don't mean to one up you, but I feel I should share a story from the top 1%.
I'm a former world first raider from EverQuest 1, and have been a top north american FPS competitor since back in the Quake 3 days until about 2 years ago in Counter-Strike:Source and 1.6. I've run 8-9 hour raids in EQ 1, and farmed things (ie. ToV key, stuipd fucking rare skeleton) for over 60 hours before straight. If 40 hours qualifies the top 4%, I'd consider myself formerly in the top 1%. Some years back (2006?) I quit EQ1 for WoW because I couldn't do it anymore. I'd gone to rehab for EQ1 and, the first day after getting out I walked nearly 2 hours in the middle of the night to a friends place (didnt have a car at the time) who was up all night to borrow his EQ 1 cds, walked home and was playing again before dawn.
It probably sounds odd to think of someone saying Molten Core and BWL (never did Naxxramas though) were "casual" for me, but that's exactly what it was. I was in the 2nd place guild on my server in Vanilla, the first on alliance in early TBC, second on server (horde) in late TBC, first (horde) in early WotLK, and now first (alliance) in late WotLK. I raid 3-5 nights a week as you say, for 4 hours of pure raid time per night, I have 5 80 alts - 4 of them ICC geared, 2 of them 2k+ rated in pvp on all 3 teams. I know this is abnormal, "extreme" but looking back on my EQ1 life I still feel casual by comparison. That shit was crazy.
Probably my favorite EQ 1 story of addiction (favorite as in the most telling, imo) was 2 wizards (husband and wife) in my guild, who were hooked on meth - started playing EverQuest 1 - and just one day completely forgot to score more meth because they couldn't leave EQ - and quit cold turkey, having completely forgotten about Meth.
The thing is - as human beings we are attracted to certain things more than anything else. When you get really into a game and start thinking about the bonding experiences of difficult situations in raids or pvp - and how you couldn't have accomplished that without them, or would be dead were it not for another gamer - that to me is comparable to a blood brother borne in a foxhole in a war. The foxhole might be a dragon raid, and the blood brother might be a virtual priest avatar - but the bond can be identical I think. At the same time, the surreal worlds where we are all so much more than mere men working 9-5 is impossible to deny the simple attraction of. Any sense of hopelessnes, weakness, loss that you might experience in the real world is caused by a tangible entity in a game world - and is usually solved by severing the head of some dragon or god - would that it be so easy in real life - perhaps games would not hold the bond that they do.
Dad? Where have you been? I've been worried.
I have a few friends that play games this much. On consoles. The thing is, however, that it doesnt make them good. Console players IME tend to have a lot less 'skill'; ie- twitch reflexes and battlefield awareness.
I think that has little to do with who plays what and more to do with the environment they choose to play in. A PC gaming rig is much more likely, historically speaking, to have a higher fidelity in display, audio, and input devices.
I don't need a whole hand to count the number of console games that support multiple displays, and I'd wager more people use stereo instead of positional audio with their TV. A console is more likely to be played at a lower resolution on a bigger display, sitting back on a couch in a living room with the dog or other family distractions. Some console games I don't mind playing while lying down, which certainly isn't conducive to alertness, and I'm fine with falling asleep controller-in-hand. It's entertainment.
As a controller junkie I will choose developer sanctioned auto-aim assist rather than the grubby sandbox of PC aimbot mods. So game developers are the biggest influence in what skills are required by the player. I played flight sims in the days when, if you didn't own a Thrustmaster flight stick with its own dedicated controller card, you weren't serious. Then Freelancer came out and suddenly you could pilot with a mouse and frakking beat the game. That was unsettling. Flight sims haven't been the same since, because developers went mainstream and accessible. I think the RTS is still the only genre that truly benefits from a keyboard and mouse, because they haven't perfected radial menus yet, and even MMOs are getting menu accessible.
Moral of the story, play PC games if you want to have a challenge. Consoles are fun if you like games with stories.
Uhh.. Activision, PopCap and LucasArts would like to have a word with you...
Speaking as someone who has both spent many years of my life as as an isolated gamer type (and a couple of times had to go on anti-depressants), and also some periods of my life actually going out and doing things.. I have to say that if you put as much effort into real life as you do into gaming, you would get far greater rewards.
I'm not saying you can't also play games and chat online as these things are fun and definitely still have an element of sociability, but if you joined some kind of real life club or spent some time doing exercise to level up your real body instead of your avatar, you'd be feeling a lot better both mentally and physically (the two are very linked anyway.. simply being more fit really helps your mood and concentration levels), and more able to cope with the "real world" you seem to be so scared of.
which is totally what she said
It sure is. My epiphany came one day when I realized it had been 2 years since I last picked up my guitar, something I was quite serious about before I started playing WoW. I quit cold turkey too. I've been back now and then since then to chat and fool around but I'm also one of those who wants to play at the so called top or not at all. Since the top is something I know I can't do anymore, I've hardly felt the pull at all. It's quite a nice thing that getting back on that hardcore raiding horse with WoW is not that easy. You can't just call your dealer in one second if you get the urge on a tuesday night. You have to put time in to catch up gearwise from where you where when you left off. Even if you manage that on your own (they've made it easier but having to grind heroics for badges with random idiots is an experience that can cure any addict) you have to find and apply to and convince a proper raid guild to take you in. So once you manage to quit for long enough, it's not something you can pick up again on an impulse since it's not just up to you. You'll still have quite a bit of time to consider what you're doing.
I find that extremely hard to believe. The population of the US is about 300 million, and 174 million is more than half that. However, the average US family size is just over 3, two parents and a single child in the most common case. There is no way that over half the members of most US families play computer games, and that's before we factor in all the millions that live in poverty.
I don't mean to one up you, but I feel I should share a story from the top 1%.
Speaking as someone who has both spent many years of my life as as an isolated gamer type (and a couple of times had to go on anti-depressants), and also some periods of my life actually going out and doing things.. I have to say that if you put as much effort into real life as you do into gaming, you would get far greater rewards.
Interesting, that the two replies to this post of mine take up such a small circle of people.
You haven't 1'up'ed me. Our guild was in the top 1% of guilds and has consistently been there. Server firsts, few world firsts, but at the same time, I have spent time on mood stabilizers (I have bipolar disorder - check the sig). At the same time, I have been someone who has been into online gaming since the days of Ultima Online, and have worked for Epic Games with the development of Unreal Tournament, so I have been "in as much as can be" in games and games development - but having said that, I can't help but totally agree with the second poster's comment which I have quoted below this:
I'm not saying you can't also play games and chat online as these things are fun and definitely still have an element of sociability, but if you joined some kind of real life club or spent some time doing exercise to level up your real body instead of your avatar, you'd be feeling a lot better both mentally and physically (the two are very linked anyway.. simply being more fit really helps your mood and concentration levels), and more able to cope with the "real world" you seem to be so scared of.
While I have been pouring my efforts into both online gaming and my RL work (which is currently a Senior Performance Analyst for a multinational retailer) I have noticed that for every hour I spend honing my e-toon, I can spend the same effort at work and increase my salary. You know all the stuff you do in your guild/clan? That works in RL too. Get a job in an office. They appreciate that common sense just as much and they pay you a lot more than your guild can offer - and in dollars, not in gold.
As someone who has been through both sides of the spectrum, I can just say, games are meant for entertainment. Play them, have fun, but don't confuse entertainment with real life.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
until you've bought your first pack of adult diapers
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I guess to the average TV fan, a lot of gaming just looks like needlessly repetitive nonsense. Of course, to the average gamer, a lot of TV looks like needlessly repetitive nonsense.
Why play with others when you can play with yourself.
Too many plugins required? ;)
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
8-9 hour raids.
Surely you've forgotten the cleric epics in sky fire and Fear.
We raided Fear 39 hours straight over memorial day weekend in 2003 (4?). Every 14 hours. We could predict the order the mobs would spawn in. It was a brutal, brutal break.
I left work twice and woke up sometime in the early AM once for cleric epics in Skyfire. Then there were the little casual things like the 20+ hours spent getting jboots and similar insane quests with drop rates over 12 hours. No quest step in EQ should have taken over 2 hours. Sure- make it a 96 hour quest, but make it 48 2 hour chunks. Not five 12-20 hour chunks.
I regularly played over 60 hours a week while working a full time job. I kept playing when my hands went numb and my forearms were killing me from tendonitis.
I finally went uber at the end, saw everything in the game, and then quit as my right thumb blew out with bursitis.
I learned things from the experience that benefited my career.
I was in a "casual guild." We raided 3 days a week, 6 hours a day then probably played another 18 hours a week. It drove the true uber players crazy for the lack of serious play. The play schedule drove truly casual players insane too. They just couldn't keep up but they wanted the uber rewards.
I also learned that if I get in an activity like this again- go uber from the start. It's actually less effort, less betrayal, less "we'll always be buds", etc.
It's often much easier there on the leading edge of the game. Heck, we had the dev's go back after 24 months and make a specific encounter in Uqua impossible to beat for about 3 months. It just about killed the guild. Several people gave up.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Agreed. EQ1 was hardcore. I took up WoW on the weekends when I was an EQ1 raider just to have a break. Moreover, WoW lets you get away with soloing, EQ1 didn't really leave that as a viable option. There were very few places (and very few classes even then) that could solo reasonably effectively and get rewarded for it. This led to boxing. Before I finally quit I was running 4 characters at once and raiding with my main character 4-5 nights a week for 5+ hours a night. The weekends were for gaining experience (the AA system is the devil in EQ) and otherwise supporting my main character. I'm glad to have done with all of it. I've been off of EQ for over a year now and free of a WoW addiction for eight months.
WoW is to methadone as EQ is to heroin.