Enjoy these games while they're still ad-free..
Guilded Lilies takes a long, hard look at her time in Guild Wars, and concludes that 9% of her time playing the game is only at television's loss, not of her doing something 'more productive':
I [..] think people generally consider that time spent gaming isn't so much time spent not being a useful member of society as it is time spent away from other types of recreational entertainment. More importantly for me, as long as Coca Cola doesn't figure out how to do product placement in the Land of Tyria, it means time spent not being bombarded by the unrelenting onslaught of commercial advertising. [...] A typical hour of US television consists of 18 - 24 minutes of commercial time. If you do the math you find out that the typical television watcher spends 5½ to 7½ hours a week watching TV commercials.
How unproductive is that?
Fair point, eh?
A very good point. People always compare new things to how they wish the world was without them, not how it would actually be without them.
But I have to wonder where she got that 18-24 min. statistic. When I download shows off bittorrent, they never less than 42 minutes for an hour-long show. That would suggest that 18 minutes is the upper limit for commercials.
Posted by: Mr. Falcon | February 19, 2006 at 23:52
I'm pretty sure 24 came in around the 37 minute mark...
Posted by: Alice | February 20, 2006 at 00:06
Mr. Falcon - I got the stats from a Wikipedia entry HERE.
The 24 minutes is when there are two "half hour" programs back to back, each having up to 12 minutes of commercials. Also, this is for American television, it may not be so bad elsewhere?
Thanks Alice for picking up my post! - Guilded Lily
Posted by: Guilded Lily | February 20, 2006 at 13:00
often promotional material or station identification, public service anouncements, aren't counted as commercials.
Posted by: bigwig | February 21, 2006 at 07:37