Welcome to the site for “Gaming Moms”, a three-year research project partially funded by the Swedish funding agency Vetenskapsrådet . The project investigates gaming practices in the everyday life of families where the mother is a gamer. If you wish to participate – do get in touch with us!
USA Today och andra källor rapporterade i december att Xbox planerar att använda den berömda Tupperware metoden/House Party metoden för att marknadsföra xboxen.
USA Today announced in December that Xbox turns to the famous House Party marketing strategy; it is stated that the next new marketer of the console may be your Mom.
Gott nytt år!
Gaming Moms är ju ett projekt som tillkommit efter många års avsaknad av studier om andra grupper än tonåringar och barn, med särskilt fokus på spelande mammor. De senaste året har det börjat skymtas undersökningar, “surveys” med mera, som intresserar sig för de tidigare osynliga äldre spelarna, även kallade “gray gamers” på engelska. Jag svänger här till en svensk variant och kallar dem “silverspelarna”. En forskningsstudie gjord i Tyskland publicerades just i Games & Culture (Dec. 2008). Titel och abstrakt finner ni här nedan.
Artikeln nämner inledningsvis “Grandma Hardcore” som är en 74-årig kvinna som blivit smått berömd i USA för sitt datorspelande, såpass att hon får göra datorspelsrecensioner för MTV. Hennes barnbarn bloggar om hennes spelliv sedan 2005. En spelmamma som heter duga!
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Happy New Year!
Gaming Moms is a project born out of a lack of studies of player groups other than teenagers and children. The past year we have seen a rise in surveys and studies paying attention to the previously invisible groups of players, the older or “gray gamers”. One of these is an interview study performed in Germany recently published in Games & Culture (Dec. 2008). You will find the title and abstract below.
The article mentions “Grandma Hardcore”, a woman of 74, who has gained a bit of fame in the USA even hired by MTV to do gaming reviews. Since 2005, grandchild keeps a blog documenting her gaming life bloggar. Now, there’s a gaming mom to reckon with!
RESEARCH ARTICLE:
The Gray Haired Gaming Generation: Findings From an Explorative Interview Study on Older Computer Gamers by Thorsten Quandt Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany; Helmut Grueninger, University of Munich, Germany; Jeffrey Wimmer, University of Bremen, Germany.
The market for adult computer gamers is growing considerably. However, there are nearly no empirical works that are primarily focusing this age group.Therefore, there is an urgent need for explorative studies on these gamers. In a qualitative in-depth interview study with 21 gamers aged between 35 and 73 years, this article describes their gaming careers, the integration of gaming into their everyday life, and aspects of social interaction within real and virtual life. Overall, the findings of this study sketch a lively picture of adult players. Many of the interviewees show a very strong interest in the social aspects of gaming. However, gaming can put some strain on their family life, and many older gamers feel that their partners and peers regard their hobby as being inappropriate for their age. Still, most of the interview partners successfully manage to combine occupational and private duties with their gaming activities.
Keywords: adult gamers; gaming careers; everyday game use; social gaming;qualitative interview study
According to SIFO, 39% of the population has played computer games this year. The numbers for football are 24% and for hockey 3%. 17% of the ones who play computer games do it regularly, compared to 5% for football and 1% for hockey. This means that computer gaming is almost three times as big as football and hockey combined.
Gamers participate more in physical activity
74% of the gamers participate in physical activity compared to 61% of the population as whole.
Gaming is social
54% of the gamers play together with friends while in the age group 16-29 as many as 69% do. 12% of the gamers have gotten new friends thanks to their hobby. That means that over 300 000 Swedes over 15 have widened their social network through computer games.
The report was commented on by sk gaming and the news in Swedish can be found here.
