Game Culture - BBC Research

Game Culture seems to be a very general term encircling the gaming world. From the beginnings of the creation of a game to the people that play as a lifestyle choice, those that play a few games now and then, stretching out to merchandise, the effect that games have on the media and people that don't play games but read about them, the technology involved in creating better games and the many other places that games touch within our own cultures and daily lives. Nearly everyone knows of games, even if they don't know anything about them and most people have an opinion on them. These are the things that create Game Culture, how much people play games, how much they talk and think about them, how prominent they are within media and on our high streets.

I found some research done by the BBC in the summer 2005 on gamers in the UK.
They were looking at:

• How many people are playing games in the UK?
• How, where, when and why they play games?
• When is the family television used as a monitor for a console?
• The context in which gaming plays a role in people’s lives?
• Do people play games in isolation, or in a social situation?
• How does the public’s relationship with radio, television and mobile devices affect the games they play?
• What value do people place on the time spent playing?

I was interested in how many people are playing games in the UK and what value people place on the time spent playing. I hope that this would help me to gain a better understanding of what makes a gamer and how widespread gaming culture is.

Their results were gained using the following rules:

• Total of 3442 6-65 year-olds "from a spread of demographic and ethnic backgrounds."

• They defined a gamer as someone who has played a game across any media (mobile, handheld, console, PC, Internet or interactive TV) in the last six months.

• How often people played were sorted into the following:
  
• • Every day
  • 5-6 times a week.
  • 3-4 times a week.
  • 1-2 times a week.
  • 2-3 times a month.
  • 1-2 times a month.
  • Every couple of months.
  • less often.
• They looked at what people play their games on.
  

• What motivates them to play games.

• Where they play games:

• • Home – In the living room
  • Home – In the study room
  • Home – In the bedroom
  • While travelling
  • At a friends/relatives home
  • Whilst travelling
  • At an Internet café
  • At school/college/university
  • At a library
  • At work
  
  
• If they are only playings games or using other media as well.

• The value that they place on gaming, asking people to organise the following into order of preference.
  
• • Playing video games (on any device)
  • Watching TV
  • Films – DVD, Video
  • Films – Cinema
  • Talking to friends on the phone
  • Reading Books
  • Reading comic/magazines (Reading Newspapers was added for 11-65 yr-olds.)
    
  • Listening to music (e.g.MP3s, CDs)
  • Surfing Internet websites (non-e-mail)
  • Mobile (non-phone calls e.g. texting)
  • Listening to the Radio
  • Reading/Writing e-mails

• Their attitudes towards gaming, using nine statements with a score of 1-5 of how much they agreed with that statement:
• • I get more enjoyment out of videogames than any other forms of entertainment.
  • I spend more time playing videogames than watching TV.
  • I spend more time than I should playing videogames.
  • I prefer playing games as a social activity, rather than playing on my own.
  • Games are part of my identity.
  • I’ve made some good friends through games that are online.
  • I think that games could be used for education as well as entertainment.
  • There are too many racing, shooting and fighting games.
  • I am not really interested in videogames although I do play sometimes.

They divided the research into groups of age.

• 6 - 10
• 11 - 15
• 16 - 24
• 25 - 35
• 36 - 50
• 51 - 60
  

This is their graph showing the results of their first question, how many people are playing games in the UK.

I was surprised to see such a high percentage for the first age group, but there are so many different platforms to access games from now and with the results varying from someone who has played just one game in the last six months to people that play everyday the scope for who is classed as a gamer is much wider than people may argue it should be.
I think it's very difficult to know exactly where you can start classing people as gamers, do the need to play every day, or every week. Should it be based on how they feel about games or is it something that we can only decide for ourselves, if you class yourself as a gamer you are one?

The results for how much value people placed on playing games showed that the two youngest age groups, 6 - 10 and 11- 15, placed the most importance on playing games above the other activities and this gradually decreases as the ages go up, but playing games was still placed at a higher value than six out of the 13 choices.

The following is taken from the conclusion in the article:

Understanding UK Gamers
• 59% of 6-65 year olds in the UK are gamers: this is equivalent to 26.5 million people
• 48% of the UK aged 6-65 plays games at least once a week (21.6 million people)
• 100% of 6-10s consider themselves to be gamers
• A quarter of UK game players are aged 36-50
• 18% (or 1.7 million gamers) are aged between 51-65
• The average age of UK gamer is approximately 28
• 45% of all gamers are female
• 52% are ABC1 social grade, 48% are C2De social grade

A lot more people play games throughout all the age groups than I would have guessed and the average age is also higher than I would have placed it purely from my own experience of games and gamers.



*http://open.bbc.co.uk/newmediaresearch/files/BBC_UK_Games_Research_2005.pdf