Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Sometimes I wish I could just walk past a story that makes some daft claim about addiction or gaming violence. I’m trying with this one, because it’s about Facebook. But then again, it’s rubbish, so I should say so. All Facebook, an unofficial fansite, has produced what it describes as “10 Mind Blowing Facebook Games Statistics”. Some of which are indeed mind blowing. One of which, however, is that around 50 million – 19% of those who play games on Facebook – say they are “addicted”.

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The perennial questions of the harm that games may be causing us and our children are extremely troubling. Every week seems to bring a new survey or study that demonstrates links between gaming and problematic behaviour, with renowned psychologists, sociologists and publicists explaining to us what it is we need to be scared of. Over the last fifteen years I have been studying this data and reading these papers, and I am now ready to publish my findings. Below is the result of a decade-and-a-half’s research, and I think will once and for all answer the questions every parent, teacher, child and teenager should be asking.

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A new NPD survey, published yesterday, suggests the average amount of time spent in online gaming grew by 10% in 2009. The number of digitally downloaded games purchased also grew for the third year in a row. Well, duh. Perhaps the most interesting statistic, however, is that the PC still dominates online gaming: “The PC is still the most-used system for online gaming, with 85% of online gamers reporting using a PC for online gaming activities.” The overall population of people playing online has, however, dropped slightly, which seems kind of odd/unlikely to me, given the Facebook gaming boom.

Interpret found that, during 2007, casual games reached over 145 million people aged 12-65. Of that figure over 71 million play casual games for one or more hours per week.

There’s a new media research firm on the block, and they’ve done their homework. (Or, more accurately, they’ve interrogated 8000 people said to be representative of a cross sections of American society. That’s interesting because it means the figures above are only those people in the US playing casual games.) The biggest gaming market in the world is only getting bigger, according to this report.

Perhaps worth remembering that PopCap’s site alone handles nearly 6 million unique visitors each month. Do you play block sorting games on a regular basis, readers?