NPD: Extreme gamers play 48.5 hours per week, avid PC gamers older than average

[Matthew DeCarlo]

NPD has released a few statistics highlighting the habits of "extreme gamers" – you know, folks like Julien Barreaux. The research firm found that extreme gamers represent 4% of the total US gaming population and spend 48.5 hours per week playing video games. On average, US gamers aged two and older play games for 13 hours per week – up from 12.3 hours last year.

That increase is across the board, with console games played 9% more than 2009, and PC game activity increasing 6%. However, the report suggests that the number of hours gamers invested in portable games dropped 16%. We're not sure about that given the bolstering smartphone gaming market, and it's not made entirely clear whether phones, portable music players and similar devices were included in that figure.

The study lumps gamers into seven "distinct" groups: Extreme Gamers, Avid PC Gamers, Heavy Portable Gamers, Console Gamers, Online PC Gamers, Offline PC Gamers, and Secondary Gamers. The average age of gamers increased slightly from 31 to 32, while Avid PC Gamers and Offline PC Gamers (11% and 8% of the gaming population) are the oldest segments, with players averaging 42 years old.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/39121-npd-extreme-gamers-play-485-hours-per-week-avid-pc-gamers-older-than-average.html

 

[TomSEA]

Hey! You calling me old??

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

The numbers speak for themselves eh?

 

[Timonius]

In regards to entertainment as a whole my dad's generation could be considered generation tv and my generation could then be called generation gamer.

 

[TomSEA]

Well, I guess I am helping pull up the PC gamer age average.

Some of those figures were pretty interesting. How in the heck do they determine that 2-year old babies are playing games?? What game does a 2-year old play?

And the amount of gaming I do really fluctuates depending on the time of the year. If it's football season - my gaming drops to maybe 5-10 hours a week. During the spring when there's nothing going on I probably average 15-20 hours a game. But if I get really hooked on a good game - like Fallout 3 or Mass Effect, I can easily put in 30 hours a week.

 

[dustin_ds3000]

i the past two weeks i have played 76 hours of games, im using my steam profile to get this

 

[Supermika]

What game does a 2-year old play?

Well at age 3 some play BF and L4D on their cousins pc messing up all the good stats ^^

But a check on steam said 74 hours last two weeks... so i should be able to fit in 10 more gamer hours :grinthumb

 

[Timonius]

Supermika said:

What game does a 2-year old play?

Well at age 3 some play BF and L4D on their cousins pc messing up all the good stats ^^

And some despite how 'good' they are at those games actually do act like 4 year olds. ;p

 

[eafshar]

there was a time when i did nearly 50hrs of gaming per week.. not really proud of that but it was a period where i was obsessed with getting better at the game.. I wasn't really able to so due to major hardware disadvantage.. after i got my new system and started to truly dominate i played less and less to a point now where i play during match time and scrims which adds up to maybe 15hrs per week...

 

[red1776]

good god, How do you find 50hrs in a week to game ?

 

[Relic]

red1776 said:
good god, How do you find 50hrs in a week to game ?

Maybe he doesn't sleep? When I was addicted to MMO's I didn't get much sleep as I needed to find time to grind/raid/farm on top of my daily routine =\ . Thankfully I don't play MMO's anymore.

 

[red1776]

Maybe he doesn't sleep? When I was addicted to MMO's I didn't get much sleep as I needed to find time to grind/raid/farm on top of my daily routine =\ . Thankfully I don't play MMO's anymore.

wow, okay pardon my ignorance Relic , but what part of farming is "raid-ing"? never heard that before. must have taken it pretty seriously ey?

 

[dustin_ds3000]

Relic is talking about farming for experience points/items not growing crops

 

[Relic]

red1776 said:

Maybe he doesn't sleep? When I was addicted to MMO's I didn't get much sleep as I needed to find time to grind/raid/farm on top of my daily routine =\ . Thankfully I don't play MMO's anymore.

wow, okay pardon my ignorance Relic , but what part of farming is "raid-ing"? never heard that before. must have taken it pretty seriously ey?

Heh didn't mean to sound all serious, but in WoW at least in order to "raid" one has to gather stuff like materials to craft items, money to buy stuff, etc usually refereed to as farming. This at least in the earlier days was a lot more difficult and very time consuming. I also played hack & slash MMO's that you'd spend hours just killing the same thing to gain XP...I have no idea why I played them, but I can definitely say their was drinking involved or I'd never gotten so far.

 

[red1776]

no idea why I played them, but I can definitely say their was drinking involved or I'd never gotten so far.

:haha: well at least you cant get pulled over for drinking and MMO'ing

 

[thatguyandrew92]

Supermika said:

What game does a 2-year old play?

Well at age 3 some play BF and L4D on their cousins pc messing up all the good stats ^^

But a check on steam said 74 hours last two weeks... so i should be able to fit in 10 more gamer hours :grinthumb

ROFL my 4 year old cousin plays L4D2 on my computer

 

[RuskiSnajper]

An article defining extreme gaming , which I bet cannot be on a console in any possible way yet Xbox is hyped as nobody else.

 

[Badfinger]

So many unemployed, gaming is cheap entertainment!
I'm an extreme gamer right now, but if I was back working, it would be cut 75% time wise probably.
I too had the same reaction to: 2 year old gamers?
I got started 'gaming' around age 7, but that was in the 70's, before that, it was card and board games, remember those?

 

[Flannelwarrior]

I was definitely playing 40+ hours of WoW at my peak, and probably 30 some hours of StarCraft when I peaked there, too. I was age 16 and 13 respectively, now that I work fulltime I have no time to game.

 

[Docnoq]

I played WoW for about.. 2 and a half years consistently and in that time managed to rack up 3,377 hours. Too lazy to do the math on how many hours per week that is, but it's quite a bit. That was back when I was in high school.

Now that I am only taking two summer classes and working part-time, I would say I game about 20 hours per week.