Gamer Myths – Infographic and 10 Facts

As you can gather from around our blog (e.g. ‘Games Develop Social Bonds and Communication Skills’, '11 Educational Games for Social Good’ and ‘21st Century Skills and Games Based Learning’), we believe that games can do a whole lot of good.  They can teach people, heal people (see ‘Games Based Healing’), encourage positive behaviour (see ‘The Fun Theory’), impart skills and enlarge existing capacities, promote conversation and friendships (see ‘The Art of Conversation’) and so on and so forth.

I wanted to share with you a fantastic infographic that further ‘debunks’ some gamer myths, followed by some other interesting facts and figures.  Hopefully these will help to convince people (especially parents) that games aren’t all bad and can actually do a lot of good.  And some of the facts suggest that most parents actually do appreciate this.  Hopefully the education system isn’t far behind…?

Infographic courtesy of  Lumosity. Click for larger image.

This article contains many interesting gamer facts, but some stick out in particular:

• 68% of parents believe that game play provides mental stimulation or education
• 57% believe games encourage their family to spend to time together
• 54% believe that game play helps their children connect with their friends
• 61% of surveyed CEOs and CFOs are playing games during their working hours
• 46.6% of surveyed German employees playing games during working hours: daily, 10.0%; several times a week, 15.5%; once a week, 7.0%; once per month, 3.6%; less than once per month, 10.6%
• Average age of gamers in years: 37 (has also been playing for average of 12 years)
• % of female gamers: 42 (In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater  portion of the game-playing population (37 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (13 percent).)
• % of gamers older than Fifty (2011): 29 (an increase from 9% in 1999)
• Percent of gamers who play games with other gamers in person: 65
• 91% of the time parents are present at the time games are purchased or rented.

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