Games are depressing...or are they?

[Fuzz_Ball]

LMAO at this drivel!!!

The average gamer is 35, overweight, and more likely to be depressed, says a new study conducted by researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plug ... y-/1346074

I don't know about the "rest of us" featured but I'm in pretty good shape and aside from temporary financial woes, actually enjoy my life outside of UT. They must be talking about those dreadful "strategery" type gamers. I sure feel a boost of joy when my opponents are blown to tiny bits in front of me!

Oh, and since the CDC is involved, will the Feds be monitoring all gamers and charging them higher insurance premiums????

[Hermskii]

Don't temp them. They already tax smokes and booze. They'll be taxing us based on how much we play each day pretty soon.

[-SuPreMe-]

I hate it when they try to to categorize people like this, with crap like "gamers are lonely"
and these researchers are allways completely uneducated on video games and have probly never fragged someone in their lives.

Or maybe they are just refering to people that play World of Warcrack.

[Hook]

I dono...
But nothing feels better and gets me pumped more than a good session of UT99!

[BIOMECH]

Have they ever seen the average gamer?

Hell yeah eat my bullets you stupid dodgy krall! man I love this music! chaaarge! next please! oh hi you wanna taste of ripper blade!? headshot! headshot! headshot! oh god the team is leaving without me! come back you rushers! get outta my way pathetic noob alien! Moo!

Disclaimer: I don't play like that, I'm just saying things

[matrix]

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/study-games-are-depressing-or-are-they-/1346074

There ya go.




And Nali is right, role playing games where you progress in the world only to be able to progress more are very different games with very different gamers. But I still don't like the categorizing.

[Reiyel_3.0]

I´m a researcher. I´ve worked on studies like this before, but never in one about video gamers. They are not a complex market on Latin America yet (I´ve seen a couple of videogamers researches in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, but nothing else).

The thing is, when you´re not a good researcher or when you just don´t like to work, you end up with conclussions like these ones; only repeating out-of-date stereotypes which don´t give you any kind of valuable and accurate information about your target. Either your methodology was really poor and you had no clue about what you were researching(videogames in this case) or you just wanted to do an extremely superficial (and useless) research.

Last week I was reading some recent advertising invesment analysis in the US and one of the new trends in publicity is to advertise in video games. These kind of decisions are usually taken after lots of complex and deep researches (we´re talking about millionaire investments) which happen to completely contradict this one.

[*POTS*]

This kind of selective, biased, incomplete researches that pretend to give you truthful inferences without explaining the reasons why, are one of the things that really pisses me off.

[Hermskii]

I'm sure it's too late. We are all going to get taxed.

[*POTS*]

The only thing they haven't taxed yet is the oxygen...

[a nameless entity]

Did any of you guys actually read the article?

Mostly it just seems to ask the question "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" in regards to depression and video game playing.

Then it takes a left turn and starts talking about how a game called "Bejewelled" might actually be a way of treating depression. (Which sounds like a clever way of weaving in an advertisement for this game.)

Then it ends by saying more research is needed. So in short it said nothing new at all.

Where the heck you get the idea about higher taxation I have no idea. But with an unending decificit, and a 7, 14, 21, or whatever larger number, trillion dollar US national debt, it's no wonder that it's on your minds. Kiss the long era of cheap smokes, booze, and gasoline goodbye fellas. And welcome to the real world.

[*POTS*]

Did any of you guys actually read the article?

I just gave it a quick look.

Then it takes a left turn and starts talking about how a game called "Bejewelled" might actually be a way of treating depression. (Which sounds like a clever way of weaving in an advertisement for this game.)

Bejeweled is also the name of one of the many MSN games.
http://zone.msn.com/en/bejeweled/default.htm
Any relationships?

Then it ends by saying more research is needed. So in short it said nothing new at all.

See? 5 minutes of my life wasted for nothing.

Where the heck you get the idea about higher taxation I have no idea

Don't temp them. They already tax smokes and booze. They'll be taxing us based on how much we play each day pretty soon.

Don't look at me.

[gopostal]

Kiss the long era of cheap smokes, booze, and gasoline goodbye fellas.

I've been reading a bit about "peak oil" and the greatest minds all say HUGE changes will happen in the next half-generation. We are in the twilight of cheap living, life is about to get decidedly harder and more local.

[MEAT]

Kiss the long era of cheap smokes, booze, and gasoline goodbye fellas.

I've been reading a bit about "peak oil" and the greatest minds all say HUGE changes will happen in the next half-generation. We are in the twilight of cheap living, life is about to get decidedly harder and more local.

I'm all about cheap living and I'm doing my part by growing my own cheap smokes...

[Reiyel_3.0]

Mostly it just seems to ask the question "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" in regards to depression and video game playing.

It states that, according to their research (apparently surveys) there´s a relation between depression and video game playing. Again, a big research (involving not only simple online surveys but interviews and focus groups) is needed to state such thing, without considering more methodology in order to isolate factors that may allow you to start thinking about a correlation.

Then it ends by saying more research is needed. So in short it said nothing new at all.

Why would someone make a research in order to say that more research is needed; I could have said that by only reading a couple of papers about the subject. If you´re going to do such a poor research, and if you´re not giving the first steps in the subject (because there are many video games researches in US and Europe), then it´s better to not do it.