Survey Says…Old and Online
How many studies do you figure they can do on gamer demographics in one year? As many as can be paid for by those with industry interests! Ding, ding!
AOL had a look at who plays what and how, and came up with some rather interesting results. Knowing how I feel about survey style research, I’m sure you’ll take these figures with a grain of salt and consider them as curiosities and not cold hard fact.
Among the more intriguing tidbits:
- City Life = Gaming Life: 52% of city gamers go the online route, versus 43% of rural gamers and a surprisingly low 41% of suburbanites
- The Genders Ain’t So Lopsided: 35% of women play computer or video games, compared to 45% of men
- Men Like Online Friends: Oddly, men are more social gamers, with 32% prefering to play with friends versus 69% of women who prefer to go solo. Men also tend to form lasting relationships through gaming more than women (24% vs 23%)
- Online = Long Time: 16% of online gamers play 10+ hrs/wk, where only 6% of offline gamers do the same
- MMOs May Break Your Bank: online gamers twice as likely to spend $500/yr on games than non-online gamers (note: this takes into consideration not only the game accounts, but also such shady dealings as RMT deals, making this figure, in my opinion, a lot more realistic)
- Gaming Grannies Are Hardcore: 14% of adults age 65 or older play at least 10 hours a week.
Does the rise of so-called Grey Gamers mirror an overall rise in the gaming population? Not necessarily if you consider a way too tiny (sample size wise, 700 people to represent the entire US teen population is just ridiculous) poll conducted by Piper Jaffray: “Spring 2006 Teen Survey: Video Games”. Wonderland picked up on a rather shocking quote from the report as posted by GameDaily that revealed that
…interest in video games among teens continues to decline. Almost 80% of teens surveyed indicated they intend to spend less time playing video games in 2006 and nearly 70% indicated that their interest in playing video games is decreasing. This represents the most dramatic response in two years.
GameDaily suggests that now might be the perfect time to try and recruit new types of gamers into the fold, and with Nintendo already having positioned itself to take a stab at doing just that, one has to wonder whether Wii hasn’t timed itself wonderfully.
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