Is this a "typical" gamer?

What is a gamer?

Surely, a mental picture of a teenage guy with an un-athletic build, acne riddled face, living in his parent’s basement and no girlfriend has popped into your mind.

Now take that mental image and jettison it into a black hole, because that’s not a typical gamer. That dude is a 40 year virgin in the making. Today, video games have broken past the stereotype and into the mainstream of our everyday lives.

Let me throw some choice industry stats* your way:

- 65% of U.S households play video games

- The age of the average gamer is 32 years old

- 2 out of 5 gamers are females

We know that numbers don’t really represent the big picture, so let’s take a look at the people around us:

How many of your Facebook friends are playing Farmville / Bejeweled ? Got any games on your iPhone? (Steve Jobs is positioning the iPhone as a gaming platform to rival Nintendo’s DS & Sony’s PSP). Know any grandmother’s who play Nintendo’s Wii?

What I am getting at is that we all play video games. We are all gamers in our own rights.

So how do we segregate and profile them? The standard industry terms are “casual gamers” and “hardcore gamers”. However as a gamer myself, I resent those titles. It goes much deeper than that. One can define gamers by the amount of daily time spent on gaming and the types of games that they play.

Stress Busters (30mins – 1 hour daily use):

These are the people who take 10 to 15 minute breaks throughout the day to harvest their crops / do some Mafia like stuff or get a quick session of Bejeweled (or any other crack-like PopCap game). Flash games are also quite fashionable albeit short lived. This is a mostly female group.

Recreational Gamers (1 to 2 hours daily use):

Nintendo is to be thanked for the gaming evolution with the Nintendo DS and Wii. It is games like Wii Sports, Brain Age, Nintendogs and Cooking Mama that got the mommies and daddies hooked onto games. Games which parents are more than happy to buy for their kids, so that they can steal some game time in while the kids are sleeping. This is a mixed bag of guys and gals through all age groups.

Grown-up Gamers (2-4 hours daily use):

Video games have evolved from being 16-bit, pixilated Mario’s into photorealistic mature story driven entertainment. The gamers have grown and so have the games. For these guys and girls (I myself included) gaming has overtaken TV as our primary source for entertainment. Have no doubt that this is the future of entertainment as both Microsoft and Sony have clearly shifted their business focus to make their video game consoles the center piece of your home entertainment system. This group is mostly guys who are between the age of 20 to 40.

People who need help (6 hours and beyond daily use):

I have gotten my ass handed to me so many times in Halo and Call of Duty (multiplayer shooters) to know that there are kids (pre-teens) out there, who’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time learning new ways to kill each other. This group is mainly kids under 16.

As we barrel forward towards find new and interesting ways of connecting, more and more the reality is that video games are an effective medium to engage a myriad profile of consumers with.

*source: Entertainment Software Association (ESA)