Posts Tagged ‘study’
Gamers Get Less Sleep: Gamers Ask “They Needed a Study?”
We’ve all been there. You sit down to play a few levels of whatever you’re plowing through at the moment and the next thing you know it feels like someone’s glued sandpaper to the inside of your eyelids and the clock taunts you with an obscenely late hour. A study presented at the recent SLEEP 2009 event told the world what millions of World of Warcraft subscribers already know: gamers get less sleep.
The study also showed that people who reported their gaming interfered with their sleep got 1.6 hours less shut-eye than everyone else and those who reported being addicted to gaming slept an hour less on weekdays. Only a third of those who reported being addicted felt that it interfered with their sleep.
While it’s easy to blame this on escapist, socially inept stereotypes, it’s quite easy to get caught up in games. Sandbox games can be particularly time-obliterating since there’s no obvious landmarks to call your attention to how long you’ve been playing. Bizarrely, the easiest I’ve ever been drawn into a game without concern for time was Viva Pinata. I haven’t played it since out of fear of losing entire days to its colorful world.
Study: Xbox 360 is Most Played Online
Surprising no one, marketing research group NPD revealed that, according to a study, the Xbox 360 is “the console online gaming leader” in the United States. This study was conducted between January 6 and 26, 2009. Despite this, the PC remains “the most widely used platform for online gaming activities.”
This survey was carried out on “just over 20,000″ US residents. They found that the Xbox 360 accounted for 50% of consoles played online. Nintendo’s Wii made an improvement, coming in at 29%, a jump from last year’s 18%. PC users are a big bunch, as 87% of those surveyed used the platform to play games online. Surprisingly, that’s down from 90% in 2008. As for the PS3, it moved up from fifth place to third place.
The study also noted that microtransactions have slowed since last year, noting that PS3 and Xbox 360 users purchase more downloadable content than others.
M Ratings Make Games More Appealing
As fond of their vices as many adults are, they often seem just as fond of taking measures to ensure that children are protected from any influence that seems harmful. There’s a campaign underway intended to restrict smoking to R rated movies with the overall philosophy that only adults should see things that only adults can do.
Unfortunately most adults seem to forget that for many children the appeal of certain things is that they’re restricted, only for adults. When your parents rented a movie that they wouldn’t let you watch, you snuck downstairs while you were asleep and watched it yourself. It might have given you nightmares for a week, but it was worth the thrill.
A study of 310 Dutch children showed that kids between seven and seventeen were more likely to rate mature rated games as desirable. When shown a list of fictional games and their descriptions and asked to rate how desirable they found them the games with more mature content were rated more desirable.
This ‘forbidden fruit’ effect could be because the game has mature content or because games intended for mature audiences have to satisfy the desires and standards of adult audiences. While younger children are more easily satisfied, those who have been gaming for a long time are more likely to want the full, complex experiences intended for adults. Most games aimed at children are poorly crafted, so a more valid study could have given false review scores as well, designed to see if a game is as desirable with a lower rating when compared with less mature games with superior scores.
In-shape video characters lead to low self esteem?
If you’re not the happiest of people, perhaps you should take a look at the video games that you are playing. A recent study conducted by Kansas State University says that just 15 minutes of viewing those rippling video game muscles could lead one to feel self concious about their own body.
Apparently, the study involved having a group of men play WWF Wrestlemania and a group of women played a beach volley ball game and were questioned before and after the experiment.
Then again, this study does pretty much assume that most video game players are out of shape, which probably isn’t completely out of line.
Read (Kansas.com)
Study Says Playing RTS Will Keep Your Old Brain Healthy
Here’s a little thing I will have to remember for when I get older and wiser. A study has revealed that playing RTS games will improve your old brain’s performance. The study was published in the medical journal Psychology & Aging and it shows that real-time strategy will help the elderly maintain their ability to reason and their short term memory.
I am not sure that our grandparents can adapt that fast to an RTS game but I know our generation will be able to do it when we get older.
via physorg
Gold Farming Industry Worth $500 Million
According to a study conducted by Manchester University, gold farming in online games like World of Warcraft is now an industry worth an annual $500 million. Gold farming allows users to use real-world money to purchase in-game currency; it has become a controversial issue for game makers and players alike.
The study was carried out by Professor Richard Heeks, a gamer himself, finding out that the industry currently employs approximately 400,000 people – 80% of which is in China.
“I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry,” said Heeks. “In a way that is still true. It’s just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands.”
Additionally, Steven Davis, chief online game security firm Secure Play, claims that the criminal underworld has gotten involved, revealing that these “gangs pay for their accounts with stolen credit cards” and not deliver on the goods.