A new study has been released that suggests gamers are more social, higher educated and more successful than people who don’t but there are some questions to be asked about the study.
Let me start by saying that I am a gamer from way back and when I say way back I’m talking Amiga 500 and Atari days and unlike a lot of my friends I still play albeit not as frequently, in fact, it’s a great way to bond with my son who has only just recently bested me at halo. (A dark day indeed)
The problems we have with the study is that so far I have not managed to find one link to the actual study and the scope was rather small with only 1000 participants interviewed. Another fault that we identified is that someone was classified as a “gamer” if you played a game on a digital device in the last 60 days. With these parameters, almost everyone with a smartphone or Facebook account (which would be almost everyone) would be classed as a gamer. The final fault we have is that the study was paid for and done by Twitch, a game streaming network which honestly smacks of bias.
Anyway this being said we actually hope that the study is true as it shows that gamers are more likely to be living with other people and were more likely to agree with the statement “My friends are the most important thing in my life” than non-gamers and around 42% were likely to be employed full-time, compared to 39% of non-gamers.
There were also pretty much equal numbers of male and female gamers – the percentage of gamers who identified as female has increased from 40 to 48 over the past decade, the study found.
So there you have it, make of it as you will but we’re holding our excitement until a more in-depth study is done with a little less bias and a little more independence.
Stay Curious – C.Costigan
