Curse

Moshie · Nov 09, 2006, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Hey everyone, me again. For those of you who were interested in reading the essay that came about, this is it (pretty much except for some more minor word tweaking). It's really long and such so read it if you want...or not. There are some footnotes (like 15 in all - not many) which I'm not including because I'm too lazy. But I said I would let you guys know the outcome so here it is:

From Checkers to Go to Monopoly, games have been around to ‘wile away spare time for centuries. With the onset of fast computers and even faster internet connections, the gaming realm has moved from simple board games to online gaming communities.

Each of these communities has developed its own culture. Video game culture has extended since the first video games were created. People have formed small communities in order to play the games, talk about the games, and generally immerse themselves completely into the stories (King 117). With the internet and online role-playing games (RPGs), larger gaming communities have formed because of the ease of online communications (King 119). These video gamers have developed their own subculture, and with that come stereotypes. When the general public thinks about gamers, the image that comes to mind most often is that of a “geek” (Larke) – a white teenage boy (Larke) who does not exercise (Entertainment Software Association) and who spends the majority of his time playing video games in seclusion (Case) which leads to a downturn in grades (Harris).

The results of a survey of students and teachers chosen at random from Edmonds-Woodway High School are along the lines of the stereotype. The students and staff were asked first whether they themselves play video games or if they have a close acquaintance that does. If they said yes, then they were bypassed in the survey and the next person was chosen because they have contact with people who play and therefore would not be able to actually present a stereotype. If they said no, they were asked to recount what they believe to be traits common to the majority of gamers. Out of the 25 people interviewed, 17 believe gamers have little or no social life outside of online friends and 14 feel that gamers are in bad physical condition. The most controversial belief was whether a being a gamer also constitutes having an above average intelligence or doing well in school – 16 people said gamers are above average, 6 were not sure either way, and 3 said they are not.

Throughout the evolution of video games, there has always been a stigma and a misunderstanding regarding both the games and the people who play them. American society has developed a stereotype of a gamer but the onset of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) has also changed the focus of the gaming industry (Larke) so do the stereotypes still apply? Through this paper I will attempt to prove that the common stereotype of a gamer is no longer valid in this day and age.

Method

Sampling of gamers. Only the players of the MMORPG Guild Wars will be surveyed through both in-game solicitations as well as posting the questionnaire in a forum with a large number of active members. In-game cities were chosen on the basis of player attendance. The major in-game cities of Ascalon (all American Districts ), Lion’s Arch (all American Districts), Droknar’s Forge (all American Districts), Kaineng Center (all American Districts), and Shing Jea Monastery (all American Districts) will be my sample base as well as the members of the forums of www.GuildWarsGuru.com.

I will visit all the American districts available in a city. The reason I chose to only visit the American districts and not the International is simple. While the American districts do not contain only people from the United States, the vast majority of people who are in the American districts speak English, and so I will have a much better chance of finding people who understand what I say. While people who speak English do go to the International districts because there are less people and it is less crowded, the majority of the people in those districts speak a language other than English.
Concerning Guild Wars Guru (www.GuildWarsGuru.com), I chose that specific site because it is the biggest online community of people who play Guild Wars and it also has a member population which is very diverse as well as a popular forum.

Measures. The survey (Appendix I) contains a total of 26 questions and sub-questions. The questions assess (a) demographic information about the respondent (i.e. age, sex, marital status), (b) personal information directly assessing how well the respondent fits into the stereotypes mentioned by both the media as well as EWHS students and staff, (c) personal information regarding their everyday habits and actions, (d) internet usage and video gaming history, and (e) self-proclaimed immersion into the video game culture.

Some of the questions written are open-ended questions. People can give just a one-word answer if they wish, but if they want they are also free to expand on their answers. There are also a few scalar questions, meaning the answer is given on a scale of 1 through 7. These were the questions where a “yes” or “no” answer would be too broad such as physical condition and proficiency in in-game lingo.

Procedure. The entire surveying process will be two steps which will span 4 months. Over a 1-month period (30 days), beginning on the 5th of July, I will sign on to Guild Wars at 9pm PST. I will visit each of the cities previously mentioned with a character I have previously made, and solicit people for their email addresses in order to email them the questionnaire. Questionnaires will be emailed to every person who shows interest in completing the survey. A record will be kept of the email addresses of the people who have already completed the survey to minimize repetitive data.
Also, beginning October 22 , I will post the questionnaire on the Guild Wars Guru forum entitled “Off-Topic & the Absurd” . The forum-goers will have the option of answering the questionnaire by responding to the post or, if they prefer more privacy, by emailing the answers to the questionnaire to the email I set up specifically for the questionnaires.

Results and Discussion

Sample characteristics. Of the 32 surveys sent to players whose emails were solicited in-game, 27 were completed and returned. The other 4 surveys were marked as undeliverable. The response rate was thus 87.5% for the emails solicited in-game. 43 responses came from the forum members at Guild Wars Guru. There were 70 respondents in total. The sample was composed of 12 females (17%) and 58 males (83%). The age of participants ranged from 11 to 68, with the mean age being 22.7 years. The internet usage history ranged from 2 years to 17 years, with the mean number of years being 8.52 and with 9 people who either chose not to respond or could not approximate their usage history.

What follows is a recount of the participant’s answers to the questions (sub-questions included) and an evaluation of those answers.

Age. As previously mentioned the age range is very large – between 11 to 68. This is evidence against the stereotype that gamers are typically young people in their teens, although it is true among the sample that since the average age is 22.7, the people who play video games tend to be younger, but not all young to the extent of teens, but perhaps widening that view to also include young adults in their 20’s. This view is supported by the fact that the mode of the ages is 16. The second most common ages were tied between 18, 21, and 22. In contrast to the stereotype of the young teenager, 11 out of the 70 surveyed were 30 or over. This could be alluding to a growing trend in video games to perhaps target more mature audiences, or maybe that social trends have changed so that now older people find themselves playing video games.

Gender. Out of the 70 surveys returned, only 12 of the participants were female. That is 17% of the total field of participation, which is definitely not congruent with the fact that the population of the United States, as of 2000, contained almost 2% more females than males (CensusScope). This serves to illustrate the stereotype of video games being a predominantly male pastime. In fact, three of the female participants, when asked whether they felt they had characteristics which were either unique to themselves or applied to only a small number of people within the gaming community, felt that their gender was a big distinction. That view is backed by many female gamers (Groom). I think the male-dominated gaming culture has something to do with the technology – specifically as related to computers – fields having predominantly male workers, and so the content of the games as well as the advertisements are geared more towards male interests (Larke).

Physical Fitness. When asked to rate themselves on their physical fitness, the answers ranged from 2 to 7. The question was to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 7: 1 being not fit at all and 7 being very physically fit. 2 people did not provide a numerical answer but out of the other 68, the mode is 5. There were 23 people who described their physical fitness as a 5. In second place, 18 people described their physical fitness as a 6. Compare that to only 10 people who described their physical fitness as less than a 4.

Some teachers and students at EWHS as well as much of the US populace (ESA) feel that gamers were people who, as a whole, are in bad physical condition, but this data suggests that not even the majority of gamers are out of shape. In fact, almost 90% (88.5%) of participants stated that their physical condition was at least at 3.5 which would be average on the scale. Many participants also listed sports or working out as a daily activity and/or a major hobby.

Activities After School/Work and Hobbies. The breadth of the different activities people said they typically did after school or work was much smaller than the amount of activities people listed as hobbies. There were quite a few similarities though. 50 people listed playing video games (some said specifically Guild Wars) as something they do regularly after school or work. Other popular after school/work activities included drinking or hanging out with friends, working out or playing sports, watching TV or movies, and relaxing around the house or sleeping. Judging by this, it seems that most of the gamers in the participant group do not exercise regularly, but when asked about their hobbies, 26 listed playing sports or working out as a hobby. Reading was the second most common hobby listed.

It’s interesting that the most overlap in hobbies besides gaming and other computer-related hobbies happen to be reading and working out or playing sports. This lends support to the ESA’s 2005 study which reported “79 percent of all game players report exercising or playing sports at an average of 20 hours a month.” Also in parallel to the study, there were many participants of my survey who listed reading, writing, and playing an instrument as a hobby or a typical after school/work. The data from both my survey and the ESA survey goes against the stereotype of the gamer being a lazy, physically unfit person who does not engage in any other activity besides gaming.

Gamers and Intelligence. High school GPA values are what I chose to use as a measure of intelligence and effort. I realize that good grades and 4.0’s are not necessarily the best indicator of intelligence, which is more of a liquid concept, but they were the only numerical way I could come up with to provide some sort of measure of intelligence. I supposed a good GPA is intelligence coupled with hard work.

The GPAs ranged from 2.0’s to 4.0’s with the average being roughly 3.33 . 12 people either could not provide an answer or were not in high school yet and 6 people did not live in the United States so did not know what a GPA was. I had previously expected to get a normal spectrum of people out of this data. By that I mean I expected the average to be a 2.94 (National Center for Education Statistics) which was the average grade in 2000. The effect size of the sample is .39 higher than the national average in 2000.
It could be that part of the reason the data didn’t work out into the bell curve is because the sample is very small in comparison to all the people who play video games or even all the people who play Guild Wars.

If this data were to hold true for the larger population of gamers, then this would break the tie between people who think gamers are smart and people who don’t. The data shows that over half of the gamers (42) pulled a B average (3.0 on the 4.0 scale) or above in their classes and all participants who reported a high school GPA had at least a GPA of 2.0, which is a C average, meaning none of the gamers failed high school by American standards. This is relevant because, in at least this sample of gamers taken at face value, their performance is an entire grade point above the average. The data is definitely pointing towards the possibility of gamers being smarter or doing better academically in high school than the average U.S. population.

Also, reported in USA Today, the 2000 National Census “63% of high school graduates go to college immediately after graduation” (Henry). According to the survey, of the people living in the United States who are or were of age (36) , 28 attended or are attending a college or university. That’s about 78% of the participants. Some of those surveyed from other countries were also attending or did already attend college as well. Just because a participant attended college doesn’t mean that they graduated with a degree, but there are also a percentage of high school graduates who don’t ever attend college so the fact that the percentage is so much higher than the 2000 Census could be due to a number of factors including participants who did not go to college directly after graduating from high school.

Average Hours Playing Video Games, and Other RPGs. Besides the 8 people who did not provide a numerical answer, the average number of hours of playing video games per week is roughly 24 hrs, with a range of 1.5 hours to 80 hours. Most of the gamer participants seemed to play very frequently through the course of a week and delegate most of their online time (73% ) to playing video games.

Although this might suggest that the average gamer spends much of his free time gaming, it’s natural because if one considers gaming a hobby, then it seems less strange because people spend time on hobbies.

Hindrances, Limitations, and Possible Error. Method-wise the most prominent hindrance was that it isn’t possible to compare all people who are gamers to simply the data collected by me in relation to the MMORPG Guild Wars because there are many different genres of games which have a bearing on what the demographic will be. There are also other differences such as Guild Wars does not have a pay-to-play system like some other MMORPGs (i.e. World of Warcraft) which affects the people who have access to the game at the online level.

The biggest hindrance otherwise was definitely acquiring email accounts from people on the game. There was a lot of name-calling because many people felt that I was a scammer, and for certain good reasons. Since there wasn’t really a list of all the players’ email addresses, that was the reason why I had to physically go on Guild Wars and solicit each and every email address. However, in this day and age, there are many spammers, and I went into this assuming that most people had at least a secondary account for email which they actually wanted to read. It turns out that not many people do, or not many people admit to having one, and so my initial approximation of 100 surveys returned overshot even the amount of surveys I was able to send out.

Also, the answers I have been given could be off the mark. A larger sampling of gamers would of course bring the average of everything closer to that of the entire community, but since there were only 70 surveys returned, I can only make suggestions as to which way the information seems to be leaning towards, but cannot truly make concrete conclusions.

Another thing that is hindering my conclusions is that fact that some people want to look good in front of others, not matter if they know them or not. This might have caused some of the participants to give answers which are not really reflective of the participant’s true state. For example, they might have said their GPA was a 3.8 rather than a 3.0 or their physical condition a 6 rather than a 3. The big problem with this setup is of course that I cannot verify any of the answers. I am thinking though that since these people took some initiative and completed my survey voluntarily, then the truth rate might be higher because many of the participants also expressed interest in seeing the final product. If the questionnaire had been given to people who didn’t show initiative in completing the survey then perhaps the demographic will be different.

Blank answers and ones with no numerical data also provided a challenge. Sometimes for some of the questions which required estimation, people couldn’t remember clearly enough to give an answer. Other questions were sometimes left blank. I’m not certain whether it is because they can’t answer it, they didn’t feel like answering it, or they skipped it and forgot to go back. Since the sample base is so small already, when some people didn’t answer questions, it made it even smaller.

A similar problem to the last was people who were trying to be funny with their answers. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they took my questionnaire and my intentions seriously, but cracking a joke instead of answering the question also cut down on my sample base in certain questions.

Throughout this investigation, in order to make my conclusions, it was necessary for me to interpret some data and make some assumptions based on the information I have been given. A good example of this is in the averaging of the participant’s internet usage history. Since I could not very well put in “approximately 10 hours” into a calculator for the average, I just used “10 hours”. The same applied to instances where people said “at least 10 hours” or “at most 10 hours”. I just assumed that to be 10 hours as well. The only tricky ones were when people said “between 10 and 20 hours”. Then I would take the average of the range they gave (in this case 15 hours) and use that as their given value. This is much less accurate, but if one thinks about it, if a person normally goes online between 10 and 20 hours a week, then if they take the average of the time they are online, it should come out to nearly 15 hours anyways. That might have changed the values of the averages a bit off from what they would be without interpretation, but I feel that the difference in answer will not be large enough to warrant any further crisis.

General Discussion

First, I will sum up the general trends that have shown up in my data and then draw some conclusions about it. The average age for the participants was 22.7, which is a little higher than expected considering the average stereotype of the gamer as a teenager. The stereotype of a gamer being a male also holds as the vast majority of the participants in my survey were males. When asked about their physical fitness, the average was 4.6 on a scale of 1 to 7, which is pretty close to the mean of the scale, which means that the average physical fitness of a gamer is theoretically close to the average physical fitness of the rest of the known world. Most participants play video games on a regular basis and have many different kinds of hobbies besides gaming. The amount of different types of hobbies suggest that the hobbies for people who regularly play video games can be just as diverse as those of the rest of the population.

What this leads to is a break from the previous stereotype of gamers to a realization of the trends that gamers are moving towards. Gamers are still mostly Caucasian males, but minority groups such as women and the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transexual (GLBT) gamers are on the rise as far as involvement in the gaming community goes. Most gamers are not physically unfit. In fact, their physical fitness level is near the theoretical average for all people and many of they participate in sports or work out regularly. They often have other hobbies and their other interests seem to be as diverse as those who don’t game.

Overall, gamers are not as isolated or as much of a novelty as the stereotypes imply. Gamers have become assimilated into society and will continue to assimilate as games begin to be marketed to a new array of audiences (Larke).

Further Research

Before choosing the demographic path I had originally wanted to incorporate in-game lingo and other types of distinguishing characteristics of the online gaming community. To me that would be something interesting to write on and see if gaming communities are affected by geography and how and if anything changes (i.e. are European gamers different from gamers in the United States or Korea?).

After doing this research I feel that it would also be enlightening to see what the differences are in the demographics between different genres of games (i.e. MMORPG, RPG, First-person “shooter”, etc). One such study was done in 2002 over players of the First-person shooter (FPS) game called Counter-Strike (Wright). While this study covered in-game chat and user-to-user communications rather than demographics, it reminded me of a kind of rift in the video gaming community between people who play FPS games and people who play RPGs. There is a long-standing belief that people who play FPS games cannot play RPGs well and vice versa (Larke) because FPS and RPG require such different mind sets.

Works Cited

Case, Stevie. "Women in Gaming." Microsoft. 12 Jan. 2004. Microsoft. 2 Nov. 2006 .

"CensusScope: Your Portal to Census 2000 Data." CensusScope. Social Science Data Analysis Network. 20 Aug. 2006 .

Entertainment Software Association. New Data Shatters Video Game Player Stereotypes; Gamers Regularly Involved in Community, Church, and Athletics.
Entertainment Software Association. 2005. 2 Nov. 2006 .

Groom, Nichola. "Girl Gamers Want Respect." Australian IT 25 Sept. 2006. 2 Nov. 2006 .

Harris, Catherine L. Perspectives on Video Games: Rot Your Brain? Improve Your Mind? Boston University. 2002. 2 Nov. 2006 .

Henry, Tamara. "Report: Greater Percentage of Americans Educated." USA Today 6 May 2002. 1 Nov. 2006 .

King, Brad, and John Borland. Dungeons and Dreamers: the Rise of Computer Game Culture From Geek to Chic. 1st ed. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2003. 87-195.

Larke, Anna. Interview with BBC News Online. BBC News. 12 Nov. 2003. 2 Nov. 2006 .

National Center for Education. United States. Institute of Education Sciences. US Department of Education. Grade Point Average. 7 Apr. 2003. 2 Nov. 2006 .

Wright, Talmadge, Eric Boria, and Paul Breidenbach. "Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games: Playing Counter-Strike." The International Journal of Computer Game Research 2 (2002). 2 Nov. 2006 .

Works Referenced

"Historical Poverty Tables." U.S. Bureau of the Census. 26 Aug. 2004. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 23 Aug. 2006 .

Bargh, John A., Katelyn Y. A. McKenna, and Grainne M. Fitzsimons. "Can You See the Real Me? Activation and Expression of the "True Self" on the Internet." Journal of Social Issues 58.1 (2002): 33-48.

Gross, Elisheva F., Jaana Juvonen, and Shelly L. Gable. "Internet Use and Well-Being in Adolescence." Journal of Social Issues 58.1 (2002): 75-90.

McKenna, Katelyn Y. A., Amie S. Green, and Marci E. J. Gleason. "Relationship Formation on the Internet: What's the Big Attraction?" Journal of Social Issues 58.1 (2002): 9-31.

Nosek, Brian A., Mahzarin R. Banaji, and Anthony G. Greenwald. "E-Research: Ethics, Security, Design, and Control in Psychological Research on the Internet." Journal of Social Issues 58.1 (2002): 161-176.

Tyler, Tom R. "Is the Internet Changing Social Life? It Seems the More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same." Journal of Social Issues 58.1 (2002): 195-205.

unienaule · Nov 09, 2006, 12:32 AM // 00:32

That is probably only second in length to the Pet Guide by Jenosavel and Epinephrine. Wow. This is a pretty interesting study. I'm not really suprised by much of it, except for 12% of the people surveyed were female. Thanks for sharing the final product!

Chilly Ress · Nov 09, 2006, 01:29 AM // 01:29

This would be a decent study only if you had more than 70 people surveyed. 70 people is remarkably low and the results should not be taken seriously because of the limitednumber of participants.

The Real Roy Keane · Nov 09, 2006, 02:20 AM // 02:20

Pretty good stuff man, but the fact that most GW players say that they're in shape doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

Moshie · Nov 09, 2006, 05:15 AM // 05:15

Right. When I realized my survey would not get the amount of respondents that I'd hoped for I looked for other studies done in the field (they were few of course considering this is somewhat of a new branch of demographic study) to see whether they correlated or refuted my findings in order to make it more valid.

I'd definitely love to do something with some sort of actual statistical basis but that's kind of hard to do in 4 months.

Thanks for the comments guys!!

Divinitys Creature · Nov 09, 2006, 01:47 PM // 13:47

Great study, thanks for sharing with us. I never knew we had a 68 year old. I always figured that playing an MMO for the PvE would be something I would like to do when I'm really old.

Quote:

Originally Posted by unienaule

...

Off Topic, but as I can see in your avatar - YOU STOLE MY HAIR

Grrrrr both syle and colour GRRRRaaaRRR