Scientists Make Shocking Sports Game Breakthrough

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Scientists Make Shocking Sports Game Breakthrough


Researchers have discovered that the average sports videogame fan is a white guy who likes sports.

It's a burning question that's hung, unanswered, over the videogame industry for years: Who is buying all those Madden games? Thanks to research conducted by Concordia University Professor of Communications Mia Consalvo, working in conjunction with Abraham Stein and Konstantin Mitgutsch of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, we now know.

An online survey of 1718 sports videogame fans found that 98.4 percent are male, 93.3 percent are sports fans, 80 percent are white and have an average age of 26 years. The results of the research are almost exactly what most of us would have expected, a fact not lost on Consalvo.

"Perhaps one of the biggest findings to emerge from this study is unsurprising, but finally documented. The overwhelming majority of sports gamers' - 93.3 percent - self-identify as sports fans," she said. "That identity pushes beyond the playing of sports-themed videogames. Attending sporting events, watching them on television, participating in those activities themselves as well as following certain teams or sports were regular parts of their daily lives."

Despite the breakthrough, the work isn't done. Consalvo, who also holds a Canada Research Chair [http://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/home-accueil-eng.aspx] in Game Studies and Design, said the next step is to figure out why there is so little diversity among fans of the genre, and why females "seem to be in the minority."

"While this study provides new insights into who sports videogame players are and what they play and why, we still lack knowledge on how these players relate their passion for video games to their sports fandom in general," she explained.

The research is being conducted in support of a book being written by Consalvo, Stein and Mitsgutsch entitled Sports Videogames.

Source: GamePolitics [http://gamepolitics.com/2012/12/14/research-average-sports-gamers-white-male-and-26-years-old#.UMtiVnck98G]


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batti

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Mar 18, 2009
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And the award for The biggest "no shit" moment of this year goes to...
 

DustyDrB

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Jan 19, 2010
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Who is this 6.7% who buy sports game despite not liking sports? We must find these people and test them with electrodes and ink blots.
 

Lvl 64 Klutz

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Apr 8, 2008
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The best part of this isn't that it took a research project to figure this out, but that it took three scientists and two schools to figure this out.

And yes, to address any party poopers, I am aware that this is only a small part of a larger project.
 

BrotherRool

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Oct 31, 2008
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If they want to save time I can answer their question on diversity. 94% of people who use ESPN are male. Most sports fans are male, there is still a slight bias towards males on these sort of games. So that is why most sports game players are male. And the reason most people who play sports games like sport, is because well, they like sport

rhizhim said:
The scales fell from my eyes.
i..i cant find the words to describe this feeling.
i must go now and live the rest of my life in solitude in tibet until i enter nirvana.

wait, only 93.3% are sports fans?

who are the 6.7% masochists that aren't sports fans but still play sports games?
This is exactly what I wanted to comment on. 6.7% so nearly 7 in every 100 people playing a sports game don't like sport?
 

The_Great_Galendo

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rhizhim said:
DustyDrB said:
Who is this 6.7% who buy sports game despite not liking sports? We must find these people and test them with electrodes and ink blots.
my theory would be that the 6.7% are grandparents and dads that buy them for someone else.

or EA employees forced to buy them on john riccitiellos orders.
Well, to be fair, I played the heck out of NBA Jam when I was a kid, despite not being all that much into basketball (or sports in general). The 6.7% could easily be people who like, say, playing video games with sport-loving friends more than watching TV with said friends, or who like, say, "calling the shots" more than watching other people do so.

I'm actually a little surprised that only 6.7% of people who buy sports games don't like sports. I'd have expected it to be more in the 10-20% range.
 

The Artificially Prolonged

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Jul 15, 2008
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Wow thanks researchers. I've always wondered about why I, here sitting in my Liverpool shirt, may like sport games. Who'd have though that my fondness of football was in some way connected to me enjoying football video games and being male, coincidently the largest demographic for most spectator sports. I can only imagine the years of serious research and investigation that must have gone into reaching this conclusion, surely these researchers have powers of deduction worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself.

Err... yes massive sarcasm, I know.
 

Aaron Sylvester

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98.4% male?! Impossible, I saw a woman or two on these forums claim that 40% of all gamers across all genres are female.
 

ASan83

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To quote one of the great sages of our time, Phillip J. Fry: "I'm shocked. Shocked! ...Well, not that shocked."

In all honesty, this may be one of the most pointless wastes of time and resources I've ever heard of. I could have told you this for nothing.
 

McMullen

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Mar 9, 2010
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I suppose you're right. This validation of a preconceived notion proves that there's really no value in testing such notions. After all, no significant discoveries have ever been made that were unexpected, right?
 

gigastar

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Sep 13, 2010
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Not the sort of information im ready to stomach during an eyestrain migrane.

Aaron Sylvester said:
98.4% male?! Impossible, I saw a woman or two on these forums claim that 40% of all gamers across all genres are female.
I think we arent explicitly talking about gamers here.
 

AldUK

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Oct 29, 2010
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Hilarious article. Can I have government funding to find out the average buyer of CoD games? It'll take 2 years and I'll require a team of 6 underneath me, all women. Cause equality and stuff.

I guess this is why we're not colonizing Mars yet.
 

Antari

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Nov 4, 2009
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I really wish I could get paid to do this level of mind blowing work. As it is if I came to my boss pointing out the blatantly obvious, he'd be pointing at the door.
 

Tony2077

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Dec 19, 2007
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AldUK said:
Hilarious article. Can I have government funding to find out the average buyer of CoD games? It'll take 2 years and I'll require a team of 6 underneath me, all women. Cause equality and stuff.

I guess this is why we're not colonizing Mars yet.
that and i think we lose the people that would have gotten us there to wars or what not
 

RandomMan01

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Sep 18, 2012
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DustyDrB said:
Who is this 6.7% who buy sports game despite not liking sports? We must find these people and test them with electrodes and ink blots.
Well, that 6.7% may be like me. They don't enjoy watching sports, but they like playing them, and that includes video games involving them. I personally don't enjoy basketball at all, but I have played the shit out of NBA 2k12.

OT: Why would you need an experiment to determine most sports games players are young, male, sports fans. Plus, why do they even need to do that, what do we gain.

Captch: Generation. Well yes, I suppose the current generation also enjoys sports games.
 

Kargathia

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Jul 16, 2009
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Tony2077 said:
i vote really!!! so much money wasted on something most people already knew
Well, to be fair: we didn't know, we just had a strong suspicion.

That said: coloured female Madden fans who don't like sports can now feel truly secure in their unique-ness. It is not often one can ask: "am I the only one who....?", and be answered with a triumphant "YES! YOU ARE A UNIQUE SNOWFLAKE!".