Car News

I write articles pretty quickly so I sometimes don't back them up with
as much data as I should. I do in fact have data to support my
argument. To address your concerns:

Using the references below, I infer that game sales are tied to time
and money, and that teenagers these days have more time and less
money. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates that 16-19 year
olds have a much higher unemployment rate, and this is the same group
that normally experiences a dip in hobby gaming (see below). Since,
as you pointed out, hobby games have a much higher value per dollar
than other forms of entertainment (i.e., movies) I believe it's
reasonable that teenagers who play RPGs might game more -- both
because they are economically restricted due to lack of income and
because they have the time to play that RPGs require. A full-time job
increases money and decreases time, so I would expect those two
variables to be adjusted accordingly by unemployment.

I can't prove this of correlation of course. I can base it off of my
own experience, which was that I was gaming twice a week in excess of
six hours at a time until I got a job. Work severely curtailed gaming
because we had more competing entertainment factors to spend money on,
like movies and women. :)

I agree with all your points (as does Internal Correspondence, which
arrived in the mail today, coincidentally). I do not believe all
gamers are jobless teenagers who game out of boredom or poverty -- I
do think that, given the chance, avid gamers would game MORE if they
had the opportunity to do so.

Please don't be offended. My goal was to provoke exactly the kind of
discussion we're having!

=====================

Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0 by Ryan
Dancey

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/wotcdemo.html

3. Adventure Gaming is an adult hobby
More than half the market for hobby games is older than 19. There is a
substantial "dip" in incidence of play from 16-18. This lends credence
to the theory that most people are introduced to hobby gaming before
high-school and play quite a bit, then leave the hobby until they
reach college, and during college they return to the hobby in
significant numbers.

Second Person: Role-playing and Story in Games and Playable Media

Narrative Structure and Creative Tension in Call of Cthulhu by Kenneth
Hite

p. 38

"The first is the rapid turnover in the role-playing hobby as a whole.
Role-playing gamers traditionally enter the hobby around ages 12 or
13, before high school. They pay until 16 (dropping out with the
availability of a car, and the concomitant expansion of available
competing activities) and enter the hobby in college (when mobility
and choice are artificially constrained again) and drift out of it
after graduation, marriage, childbirth, or other life changes. By this
understanding, a typical gaming group lasts only four years at the
most."

Internal Correspondence #73, September 2010

A Secular Change in Gaming? Or is it the Economy

p. 4

"A lot of people would rather spend $60 for a board game that they can
play with their family so they get their social interaction, their
parenting in, and they don't have to worry about their kid sitting in
front of the TV playing videogames," Procell told us. "They're out
there buying games that they normally wouldn't buy. They're out there
looking for stuff to do with their kids."

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