Ownership of video game technology

Widespread ownership of both hardware and software was found throughout the province. For example, 95 percent of the teens surveyed said they had access to either a video game machine or home computer and a similar proportion (90 percent) said they owned at least some video games.

There was no difference between girls and boys for the ownership of one video game machine. Eighty percent reported owning one machine, however, boys (41 percent) were more likely to own two or more machines than girls (28 percent). As well, boys (58 percent) were more likely to own a home computer than girls (44 percent).

Surprisingly, there was little relationship found between ownership of hardware and the amount of time spent playing. However, heavy players were more likely to own a home computer and were quicker to purchase newer game machines such as the Nintendo 64 and the Panasonic 3 DO released just prior to the survey.

Participants were asked how much their parents had invested in video game and computer technology. Teens estimated that their families had spent approximately $2800 on computer and video game hardware and about $430 on video game software.

There was no difference found between families of boys or girls for expenditure on hardware, but families of male children did report spending more ($477) on games than families of females ($352).

Heavy players reported owning more games (23 on average) and spending more on them ($500) than light players (17 games on average; $410). Extensive collections of +50 games were owned by a large number of heavy players (17 percent) and a small proportion of light players (9 percent).

The results of the survey indicated that video game play has become a common leisure activity among B.C. teens. Eighty percent of teens said they played at least occasionally and the average amount of time spent gaming for the sample was 5 hours per week.

There was considerable variability found in the amount of time that kids spent playing. Fifty percent of the sample spent less than three hours per week playing games, the rest were equally divided between regular players who spent anywhere from three to seven hours a week and heavy players who spent over seven hours a week gaming.

The survey also revealed that video games were largely a male pastime. Boys, for example, said they spent twice as much time playing (6 hours per week) as girls (less than 3 hours per week). This finding supports the male preference for video games found in other international studies (Durkin, 1995).

By and large, video game play has become a domestic activity with th e majority of youth playing at home (46 percent of respondents) or at a friend’s house (25 percent). In comparison, only 17 percent said they played at an arcade.

In order to assess the social dimension of game play, teens were asked to specify how often they played alone, or with their family and friends.

In general, adolescents played more often with their siblings than their parents. A large proportion of teens said they played at least sometimes with their brother (50 percent of respondents) and with their sisters (25 percent). Only a small proportion played at least sometimes with their fathers (18 percent) or mothers (7 percent).

Teens prefer to play games with their friends. 22 percent of our sample, reported that most of their friends played games. Not surprisingly, boys had significantly more friends who played than girls. Heavy players were divided: 40 percent reported having mostly gamer friends while 51 percent reported having only a few friends that played.

It thus appeared that there were at least two types of heavy gamers: for one group, gaming was a highly social activity forged around networks of gamer friendships - a gamer culture who talked and lived video gaming. However, for others video games are played to kill time when friends are not available. Many heavy players, in fact said gaming was their favorite solitary activity.

One of the aims of this study was to understand why video games were so compelling. One way of gaining insight into motivations was to assess the desired emotional experience of game play. Teens were given a list of emotions and asked to indicate the degree to which they applied to gaming.

The majority of teenagers (over 80 percent) said that playing them produced a pleasant, exiting, challenging, and interesting experience. A great number of teens also felt gaming to be involving (77 percent) and at times frustrating (63 percent). We found that boys and girls experienced games differently, with boys more likely to associate positive emotions with play (e.g. pleasing, exciting, and involving) and girls more likely to associate negative emotions with play (e.g. frustrating, boring, and stressful).

Heavy players were almost in total agreement in their description of play. They said that playing video games was exciting (98 percent of heavy players), interesting (96 percent), pleasant (92 percent) and involving (90 percent). This supports the perception of the video game as a ‘pleasure machine’ (Brody, 1992). The survey also revealed some large and significant differences between players. For example, a higher proportion of heavy players described video games as exciting, interesting, and involving than light players. In addition, heavy players reported experiencing these emotions much more intensely than other players.

In general, the sports, racing, action, and fighting genres were preferred, with 40 to 50 percent of respondents saying they liked them, while 30 percent said they disliked them. When asked to choose one favorite game, the choice was overwhelmingly within the dominant action-adventure meta-genre. Given the complexity of contemporary game designs which combines aspects of different genres, the old categories no longer serve to adequately characterize the aspects of games preferred by gamers.

Though no genre emerged as a favorite, male heavy players developed different preferences than light players. For example, male heavy players preferred games with lots of action (60 percent) and fighting (61 percent) compared to male light players (39 and 35 percent respectively). In contrast, male light players were more likely to enjoy playing educational or puzzle solving games.

When asked to rate the importance of various elements of a game, teens were more explicit about their preferences. Teenagers agreed that the most important characteristics in a game were those that contributed to its realism. For example, more than 75 percent of all respondents felt that realistic graphics, good sound effects, lots of control, and good characters to play were crucial to a good video game. Also considered important were the features of unpredictability (75 percent or respondents), excitement (73 percent), good weapons (72 percent), and an interesting story (67 percent).

Significant gender differences were found for many of the elements of a good game. In particular, boys felt each feature to be more important than girls did, however, the largest differences were found for action and weapons. Most boys felt good weapons (85 percent) and lots of action (70 percent) were necessary for a good game. In contrast, 55 percent of women felt weapons were important and only 25 percent of women felt action was important.

Heavy players rated all elements, particularly the presence of excitement and good characters, as more important to a good game than did light players.

The youth surveyed were in agreement with much of the criticism made against the harmful effects of violent games on ‘other kids’ and the potential for video game addiction among their peers.

The majority (85 percent) of teenagers concluded that games had some harmful influence on kids that played them. In particular, 25 percent felt that violent games had a bad influence on vulnerable kids, 34 percent felt they had a negative influence on some kids, and 27 percent believed violent games to have a significant negative effect on many players. Only 15 percent thought violent games had no harmful consequences at all. Girls were found to be significantly more critical of video games than boys.

As there has been little empirical research on what makes a game violent, we asked teens to rate a variety of scenarios for their contribution to the violence of a game. Participants generally felt that the most violent scenarios were those of sexual assault (85 percent of respondents) and gore (83 percent). Teenagers also said that the use of weapons of any kind (65 percent), punching and kicking (57 percent), and verbal abuse (53 percent) were important in making a game appear violent. Girls perceived all scenarios to be more violent, especially those of sexual assault, verbal abuse and kidnapping.

Teenagers were also asked to comment on whether or not they felt kids became addicted to playing video games. The majority of respondents agreed that video games could be addictive. In particular, 24 percent of the respondents felt that many were totally dependent on video games, 34 percent believed that some kids played them obsessively, and another 30 percent felt some played them too much. Only five percent said that video games were not addictive. Again, girls tended to be much harsher critics of video games than boys.

There was no significant relationship found between the amount of play and concern around violence or addiction. However, we did find a slight tendency for heavy players to view video games less negatively than lighter players.

An important dimension in the formation of gamer culture is the relation between video games and other leisure activities. In particular, we wanted to understand teenagers’ preferences for a variety of recreational activities including video games. We also sought to explore the kinds of activities that kids gave up in order to play games.

The most popular pastimes for teenagers were social and physical activities. Almost all of the youth surveyed said they enjoyed social events such as ‘hanging around with friends’ (91 percent) or ‘going into town for food or movies’ (83 percent). A large majority also said they liked physical activities such as playing outdoors (74 percent) and competitive sports (62 percent). Generally, few reported disliking these forms of recreation.

Boys and girls expressed different tastes in leisure activities. For example ‘hanging around and talking’ or ‘going out on the town’ were more popular with girls than with boys, though boys did report enjoying these activities as well. Girls were also much more enthusiastic about going shopping, reading and creative activities than boys. On the other hand, boys enjoyed competitive sports and watching TV more than girls, though girls also enjoyed these activities. The activity that stood out most clearly as a male pastime was video game play. Indeed, for girls this was the activity they disliked most.

When the leisure preferences of heavy players were examined, it was apparent that though these kids did enjoy playing video games they had not overtaken other forms of leisure activities. For example, heavy players preferred hanging around with friends, going out in town, and watching TV to video games. However, heavy players were more likely to enjoy playing games than doing physical activities.

In order to establish the appeal of video game play and to see what proportion of kids considered themselves to be "gamers" we asked them to indicate their level of interest in games.

In general, the appeal of gaming was rather low. The majority of teens said they were just ‘sort of interested’ (46 percent) or not interested at all (37 percent) in playing games. Only 14 percent of young people considered themselves to by ‘really into’ games. Most of these enthusiasts were boys (22 percent of male respondents), though there were a number of girls (6 percent) who were also deeply ‘into’ games.

Though a large proportion of heavy players said they were ‘really into’ games, we were surprised to find that the majority (55 percent) were only ‘sort of’ interested. Why these kids spend so much time in an activity that is not what they really want to be doing is a matter that merits further investigation.

When teens play video games they sometimes give up other activities to do so. We found that the most common activity to be sacrificed on this digital alter was the drudgery. Homework and chores were cited by 21 percent of all respondents as something they often gave up. Teenagers were more reluctant to miss out on family activities (8 percent of respondents), other leisure activities (7 percent), and time with friends (5 percent) in the pursuit of their fascination with video games.

We found that boys were slightly more likely to displace all activities than girls. Nevertheless, even for boys the level of displacement was relatively low, which generally supports our conclusion that for most kids, video games simply ‘fill up’ free solitary time. When youths were asked to state what they most enjoyed doing when alone, video games became the most popular activity for boys (28 percent).

It was clear that for heavy players displacement was a more common issue than for light players. They reported putting off their homework and chores (37 percent) as well as family activities (18 percent) far more often. They also occasionally missed out on leisure activities (13 percent) or spending time with their friends (10 percent) to a greater degree. This general displacement pattern was found across all male heavy players. Female heavy players normally missed out only on doing their homework or chores. But they rarely displaced any other activity.

An obvious general question concerns how video game play compares to television, as an attractive form of electronic entertainment.

We found that teens generally found watching television more enjoyable than playing video games. However, when gender was analyzed, it appeared that boys reported that both activities were equally enjoyable, while girls would much rather watch television than play video games.

Teens reported a diversity of viewing habits. On average they reported spending 13 hours a week watching television (somewhat below Statistics Canada figures). The majority of teens watched somewhere between 4 and 20 hours per week and a minority of teens said they watched in excess of 30 hours (9 percent) or did not watch at all (6 percent).

The survey revealed gender differences in the use of both television and video games. In particular, boys seemed to use these as complementary forms of entertainment. That is, the boys who spent the most time playing video games also reported the most TV watching. In fact, male heavy players watched on average 20 hours of television a week, almost double the amount that other males and females watched. Keeping in mind that heavy players were kids who spent at least 7 hours a week playing games, the combined activities of television and video game play took up nearly 30 hours per week, if not more. This pattern of complementary media use was not found for girls who seemed to trade off TV and video game play.

Participants were also asked to rate the types of shows they liked to watch (e.g. sports, comedy/sitcom etc). Genre preferences for television were much more clearly defined than for video games. In particular, a preference was found for entertainment oriented programs over information based programs. For example, teens liked watching sitcoms (82 percent), films (73 percent), action shows (70 percent), and cartoons (53 percent). In contrast, teenagers generally disliked advertisements (10 percent), infomercials (11 percent), educational programs (14 percent), news (15 percent), and nature shows (18 percent).

Girls and boys reported stereotypical viewing preferences. In particular, males enjoy watching sports and action shows whereas females were keener on drama. Different viewing tastes were also found among heavy and light players. Both male and female heavy players tended to enjoy watching cartoons more than light players, suggesting the existence of shared entertainment value for cartoons and video games.

The survey indicated that the majority of parents allowed their teenagers to freely use both television and video games. However, teens were more likely to report the presence of rules around the use of television (39 percent of respondents) than video games (22 percent). This was the case regardless of how much time the teens actually played.

For both TV and video games, household rules tended to focus on when teens used these media rather than on the content of the games or shows. For example, while 40 percent of respondents had to finish their homework and chores before playing, only 15 percent had restrictions around the kinds of games they could play. This was taken to indicate that parents were most concerned about the amount of time that adolescents dedicated to these activities.

Few teenagers reported getting in trouble for breaking household rules concerning video gaming. One interpretation of this finding was that teens typically maintained a good balance between important activities and their use of video games and television. However, those that played a lot did report getting into trouble more often. For instance, light players generally reported ‘never’ getting in trouble for playing video games whereas heavy players typically said they ‘rarely’ did. This difference was significant and was found for both female and male gamers.

From this survey we are able to conclude that playing video games on PC, console or net is well established among teens in British Columbia. Between home and arcade, playing video games has become a normal and frequent part of many teens leisure time activities.

Gaming was found to be especially appealing for boys who not only spent more time playing but reported higher levels of interest and enjoyment in video games. At present, however, we have only a limited understanding of the reasons that games are so much more attractive to boys. But based on patterns of play preference we feel that video games have been designed to appeal to the kinds of emotional experiences that boys more than girls seek for their leisure activities.

It is hard to draw conclusions from this survey concerning the social dimension of video game play. For many of the male ‘gamers’, video gaming was part of a network of friendships and social affiliations making gaming into a cool thing. Yet for others playing was an isolating and solitary activity -- undertaken alone or within the sibling relationships when there was nothing better to do. One limitation of the present survey, however, was that it did not assess the quality of these relationships nor did it explore what kids got out of them. Future qualitative research is needed to develop our understanding of these issues.

We found that the industries genre classifications were not very helpful in distinguishing the games that teens most enjoyed. We think that although gamers do form preferences for certain kinds of games, this only stimulates an interest in video game play in general. This blending of genres reflects trends in game design, which blends features of many genres making older distinctions seem obsolete to players. As such, we think researchers need to develop a better understanding of the distinctions and criteria that gamers themselves use to differentiate between games.

The survey revealed that the emotional experience of game play was intense, characterized by strong feelings of pleasure, excitement, and involvement. As such, it would appear that much of the appeal of video games lies in the feelings of immersion that are achieved when television is made ‘interactive’.

Overall, the study suggests that for the majority of BC teens, electronic entertainment has not displaced those traditional social recreational pursuits of teenagers - sports, malls, and hanging in groups. For the majority of teens, social and physical activities remained the most desirable diversions. However, the study also found that for some teens, these preferred recreational activities weren’t always possible; when friends and planned activities were not possible TV and video game use absorbed a significant amount of their leisure time.

The main surprise came from the fact that the young people we surveyed were largely in agreement with the criticism of harmful effects of violent games and the potential for video game addiction. Many of them felt that there were some negative consequences associated with playing violent games and that many kids played too much. It was also surprising that given these concerns parents did not monitor or control their children’s game play. Parents rarely played video games with their kids and they set fewer rules around gaming than they did for TV. Whether this reflects a belief that their children’s video game play is educational, unproblematic or just uncontrollable is not clear; but when it comes to heavy players who report letting go of homework and chores, this reluctance to get involved needs further exploration.