BBC's games research 2005
While I'm waiting for our internal Research blog to be finished where our work will eventually live, I'll host the BBC's video game research here. We did this last year, and it's a look at UK residents and the types of games they play (or whether they play at all). Elements of this work was featured on BBC News, so you might've seen some of the headlines already. It's in the UK's public domain now, so subject to UK copyright laws and the terms and conditions written on the front.
Some things to note about this research: we wanted to know about people who play games in the UK, so we include people who play Solitaire, say, on a PC. Many research papers don't do this. As far as I'm concerned, if you play the games that ship with your OS, you're likely to play other games too, so why be excluded?
'Course, it turns out that if folk play games, they play them a lot and on multiple platforms, so it's not like these OS-gamers are skewing the figures by any particular margin.
What else can I say about this. The sample size of people is above the average number required (approx 2,500 people) to be able to do a national study, i.e. a sample base from which you round up numbers, much like the way we figure out who's watching what on TV. Lovely Rhianna Pratchett did the writing, although it then got hacheted by all sorts of editors, so don't blame her if only parts of it read beautifully ;o).
That's about it. Pick it up here!
UPDATE:
It's now hosted on the very new and still very rough BBC NM&T Innovation blog. Pick it up here and forgive us the windowdressing while we sort things out behind the curtains.
Interesting read... though I'm finding the way the stats are broken down in the 'importance' scale and also the type of game played in % breakdown isn't easy to get a handle on - a pie chart would have made it easier for my simple brain...
Posted by: WandringSoul | January 25, 2006 at 14:28
Visualisations are a pain, esp as left-brainers will see them differently from right-brainers!
Read the importance scale from left to right. As for percentages.. well.. have a cup of tea and a biscuit ;)
Posted by: Alice | January 25, 2006 at 15:07
Excellent. I too have a bit of a problem with the flashy layout. Also, does it say more about the editing skills, or the ridiculousness of Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft/Nokia's choices that almost none of the console names are listed correctly? (i.e. PlayStation has a capital S, Xbox is one word but Game Boy is not, while N-Gage IS hyphenated etc.)
Posted by: BillyNeon | January 25, 2006 at 18:35
What a weird study... a "Heavy" gamer plays at least once a week?!... no wonder > 80% of the population < 24 years old fits into this category... and still 48% of the total from 6-65? Wouldn't that be considered the "Normal" or "Medium" then?
They should have a "Heavy" as something like "daily" and the current "Heavy" category as "Medium" and the Medium... light and the light... non-gamer!
Wonder if playing the snake game on my nokia counts?
Posted by: Vince | January 25, 2006 at 19:47
Ah that was the last thing I was going to clarify. HEAVY simply denotes more than once a week (not ideal, I know, but LIGHT covered 3 months), and the actual responses were broken down into up to daily. Depending on age groups, daily is usually the majority.
It's a little tricky, but easily an area someone else can delve into more deeply. Wasn't super happy with the terminology, it has to be said, but as it's a descriptor (and there's data behind it which you can plainly see), we ran with it.
Posted by: Alice | January 25, 2006 at 21:11