Gamers are more educated and sociable than those who laugh at them

The face of the gaming community is changing

Almost every computer game lover has at least once faced with the prejudice that gamers are lonely losers entrenched in the attic of their parental home. The growing discussions on this topic mention the growth of the social games and mobile applications market, spending on computer games in 2013 alone in the United States of 13.5 billion dollars and so on, but, as always, there was not enough evidence.

Up to this day.

Of course, a blind search of facts about computer games will not change the established understanding of those who play them. However, the results of a sociological study commissioned by Twitch.tv and conducted by sociologist Neil Howe, well-known on the Web (he coined the term “Millenial” (“Millennium Generation”, “Generation Y”)), paint a completely new picture of the gaming community. gamers are even more sociable, successful, and educated than people who show no interest in video games.
')
The study report was published Tuesday by LifeCourse Associates, a consulting agency. More than 1,000 people answered questions about themselves and their game preferences and habits, which allowed them to gather enough base for research. As part of the study, "a gamer" was considered a person who played games on digital devices at least once in the last 60 days. About 63% of respondents fell under this definition.

In Twitch, it was decided to conduct a sociological survey because the audience of the popular video-streaming site — up to 45 million unique visitors per month — is completely at odds with the gamer's established stereotype.

"It is believed that the gaming community consists mainly of losers and asocial singles <...> and there is nothing farther from the truth," said Matt DiPietro, vice president of marketing for Twitch. “We didn’t know what the research would show, but we knew what we thought it would show, and it showed exactly what we knew.” (sic)

Judging by the copy of the report, which was kindly provided to us, gamers more often live with loved ones — family, friends, lovers — and more often agree with the statement: “Friends are the most important things in my life.” 57% of gamers surveyed and only 35% of non-gamers agree with this.

The study also showed that gamers are distributed by gender much more evenly than previously thought. 52% of gamers surveyed called themselves men, the remaining 48%, respectively, women. For comparison, according to a study by the Entertainment Software Association in 2004, female gamers made up only 40% of the community.

Gamers also have a constant source of income a little more often - 42% versus 39% of non-gamers, and this is understandable: after all, computer games are not the cheapest hobby.

The study, among other things, touched the everyday life of gamers: it turned out that they spend much more time with various gadgets and multimedia. It should be noted that most of them do not use TV and prefer to watch videos through services like Netflix or Hulu - and this is a serious problem for marketers.

“Gamers are a very valuable target audience,” DiPietro agrees, “but it's very difficult for them to reach through traditional sales channels.”

Twitch has managed to find one of these ways to reach out, and therein lies a considerable part of the popularity of the streaming site. Today, the service has approximately one million streams per month. Sandvine estimates that Twitch.tv streams account for up to 1.35% of all US peak network traffic , leaving such giants as HBO Go behind. The Wall Street Journal , based on information from the DeepField company, puts Twitch.tv on the fourth rung of the network pedestal - right behind Apple, Google and Netflix.

This success could not fail to attract the attention of the sharks of the market. Last month, there was a rumor that Google was considering the purchase of a streaming service for $ 1 billion. DiPierto declined to comment on this issue.

Source: Washington Post


UPD: Actually report from the site Twitch.tv: PDF, Eng.