Study: “Extreme” Gamers Spend 48 Hours Per Week Gaming

Posted 06/01/2010 at 2:47am | by Nathan Grayson

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Back in our day, “extreme” meant skateboarding, rollerblading, and pretty much anything involving wheels and serious bodily harm. Now, though, times have changed. Presenting: the extreme gamer. He plays videogames! He eats occasionally! And… yeah!

The NPD study – which found that the average gamer spends a significantly healthier 13 hours per week in his/her virtual world of choice – was conducted with 18,872 participants. Among other things, it also found that PC gamers are older and (hopefully) wiser than their console counterparts, though total playtime has seen an increase on both sides of the great divide.

"When looking at the number of hours gamers spend per week playing video games, hours spent playing both console and PC games showed a marked increase over last year's study, with console games increasing 9 percent and PC games increasing 6 percent,” said the study. 

"The average age of gamers increased slightly over last year from 31 years of age in the 2009 study to 32 years in this year's study. Avid PC Gamers and Offline PC Gamers, comprising 11 percent and 8 percent of the gaming population, respectively, are the oldest segments with an average age for both of 42 years."

Hooray! We’re old! Granted, we don’t feel elderly in the slightest. Nope. Our days of constant forgetfulness and long-winded “back in our day” speeches are still far-off. Now what were we talking about again? We don’t remember. But we’re pretty sure there are some kids on our lawn that need a stern talking-to. Huh? What gives us that impression? Oh, nothing in particular. We just know.