finmon's forum posts
Ok, here is a statistic bouncing around that may have been blown out of proportion a little.
According to a recent Nielson survey of 3,000 American consumers' entertainment budgets, the average % spending on video games is 4.9%
This puts games ahead of more traditional/mainstream forms of entertainment such as DVDs (3.5%), and subscription TV (4.1%). Escapist and gamepolitics picked this up as a sign of some kind of big shift toward gaming. Yet I’m not so sure % money spent on games necessarily reflects time spent gaming, or its popularity.
As income rises, I think the percentage income a person will spend on DVDs and subscription TV will start dropping sooner than the amount they spend on games.
DVDs are as cheap as they’ve ever been, and most people I know would buy several a month. New games tend to sell at a premium and the average gamer is unlikely to buy more than 2 or 3 a month. As incomes increase, there will come a point when there are only so many DVDs one can watch in a month, and I believe this point will come faster than the point where a person has spent all they are willing to on games.
Put another way, if a person buys 12 DVDs and 3 games a month now and their income went up, I think they would sooner move up to buying 9 games than they would 40 DVDs.
As far as subscription TV goes, while I have no research to back this up, i would have thought the percentage a person spends on subscription TV is going to rapidly decrease as income increases. If my entertainment budget kept rising, I don’t believe I would keep constantly expanding my range of channels beyond a certain point.
This isn’t to say the statistic isn’t interesting. I just question what conclusions can be drawn from it.
Screen Writers Guild of America have decided on the best video game writing of last year:
VIDEOGAME WRITING WINNER
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Written by Amy Hennig; Sony Computer Entertainment
http://www.wga.org/awards/awardssub.aspx?id=1517
And a reminder of those nominations again:
- Assassin's Creed II, Story by Corey May, Script Writers Corey May, Joshua Rubin, Jeffrey Yohalem; Ubisoft Entertainment
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Written by Jesse Stern, Additional Writing Steve Fukuda, Story by Todd Alderman, Steve Fukuda, Mackey McCandlish, Zied Rieke, Jesse Stern, Jason West, Battlechatter Dialogue, Sean Slayback; Activision
- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Written by Amy Hennig; Sony Computer Entertainment
- Wet, Written by Duppy Demetrius; Bethesda Softworks
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Script Writer Marc Guggenheim; Activision
[Edited to add: Yay! I spun this post off in to an acknowledged tip in Joystiq]
"Lmao...man...Australia, just wtf?? Are you intentionally trying to look as silly as you do? There'll be a horror flicks based around angry gamers soon enough, ''JUST ONE GLITCH TOO FAR!'' "
What happened to you Australia? You used to be cool!
PS: I never knew that was the tagline to that movie. Makes it seem really seedy...
http://www.news.com.au/technology/gamers-scarier-than-bikies-says-michael-atkinson/story-e6frfro0-1225830886493
Of course an age rating system is the sensible way to handle the issue, but I guess this guy can score more political points by scaremongering about little Johnny being encouraged to kill hookers from playing GTA. Videogames are just today’s easy target: there were big scares in the past about the corrupting power of comic books, then movies, but these have become since become mainstream to the point few western countries would outright ban them for their content (unless it was incitement to hatred or a snuff film or something).
Video games are becoming less and less of a fringe thing, and it would shock me if these kind of policies were still around in 10 years. By then they’ll be scape-goating Holodecks.
On the plus side, its cute that Australians call biker gangs ‘Bikies’!
Log in to comment