I must admit, in my ignorance, I thought this weeks lecture would not be relevant to me until Josh opened his lecture explaining that we would be looking at Why and How we study the 'video game'.
Demographics and Market Delivery where the main focus areas.
Josh explained that prior to 2005 no real or in-depth research has been carried out on the demographics in relation to video gaming usage. It was in 2005 that the Nelson Active Game Marketing Group found that the previously perceived conception that 80% of 'gamers' where 18-25 year old males.
Their survey found that 59% of gamers where actually 18-40 year old males and a staggering 41% of gamers where females.
Now males and female gamers differ not only in their choice of game genre's but also in their mode of playing these games.
Males tend to dominate the console, on-line, pc etc delivery of games and females tend to dominate the mobile phone and Wii delivery of games. The Arcade game is frequented equally by both male and female gamers. I think Josh's conclusion that this could be because both male and female gamers know they may be able to 'meet' fellow gamers in this environment, is quite viable.
Females are probably attracted to more fitness and nurturing style of games because females are generally more fitness orientated and nurturing. Males are probably attracted to more first person shooter (FPS) and strategy style games because they are, well..... male.
The above brings about many questions, so the Why we would want to study a video game is then followed by How to study the 'video game'.
Josh suggested 3 methods to study the video game.
1. Social Science Approach
2. Humanities Approach
3. Industry & Engineering Approach
Interesting to note:
* Advancement of the video game, brings about the need for New Technology - eg. faster video graphic cards etc etc etc etc.
* Gamers have been found to be better at split decision making, have better peripheral vision, better short term memory and better manual dexterity skills. NB: what is not know is if these gamers had a predisposition to these attributes or if they where developed through gaming.
* Mediums like the Wii are being used in retirement villages for fitness - Which I think is great. BUT what is not great (in my opinion) is the usage of the Wii in primary schools for abled students and in gyms..... Crazy .... Stupid.
Anyway, the study of the video game can give a world of useful information for a variety of 'areas' for a variety of uses.
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