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  • Hanging at GameStop

    By Joshua Kim December 27, 2009 5:37 pm EST

    How much time do college students spend playing video games? I did some quick Googling this morning and was unable to come up with any recent numbers. (Can you do any better?)

    What I did find was that:

    According to a Harris Interactive 2007 survey, the average teen boy spends 18 hours per week playing video games, 10 more hours than his female counterparts.

    From the Pew Internet & American Life Project - in 2008:

    --97% of teens, age 12 to 17, play computer games - encompassing console, Web or portable games.

    --86% of teens play console games such as XBox, Playstation or Wii.

    The last study to focus on college students that I could find is a 2003 Pew Internet & American Life report, Let the Games Begin: Gaming Technology and Entertainment Among College Students.

    My guess is that a significant proportion of our college students spend more time playing video games then studying, sleeping, eating, going to class, and perhaps breathing.

    As someone who makes his living in learning technology I applaud this trend, and as a parent I see it as my duty to contribute to the video gaming habits of our next generation of students. With this goal in mind, I set out with my older (7th grade) daughter to our local GameStop to pick out a new game for our family Wii.

    I highly recommend a pilgrimage to GameStop as the fastest route to conduct a little ethnographic observation amongst our future scholars. GameStop is to today's teen boy what the record store, comic shop, and arcade was to my generation. Video games, particular console games, have replaced baseball cards and Dungeons and Dragons. On any given Saturday night you can find clumps of teenage boys hanging out, exchanging used games for other used games, playing demo games, and engaged in deep, learned passionate debate. Best graphics and game play: Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4? Most skill required: Need for Speed or Guild Wars? Guitar Hero vs. Rock Band.

    I was happy to bring my 12 year old to GameStop so she could get a glimpse of the teenage boy in his natural environment. She was eager to go home after we picked up Shaun White Snowboarding for the Wii balance board, overriding my desire to hang out and chat with the employees (teen boys indistinguishable from the patrons in their piercings, black concert t-shirts and baggy pants).

    On the drive home we discussed GameStop culture, and how important it is for everyone to have a place to go where we can find people who share our passions and predilections. We agreed that the GameStops of the world, while seemingly profitable today, feel like an anachronism in a world where digital entertainment (music, movies, TV) are purchased by the download. How long can video games hold out as bits and bytes that are sold on plastic discs at grungy stores in strip malls?

    And we agreed when video games finally transition to a digital delivery form, and the GameStops all close, then our culture will have lost something. The teen boys will all be in their homes, or their dorm rooms, debating in chat rooms and loosing one of the few public places where gamers can work and congregate. Perhaps one way our colleges could attract the next generation of students is to forgo the fancy new gym, skip the new dining hall, and instead open a GameStop on campus.

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Comments on Hanging at GameStop

  • Posted by Brian Reid at Dartmouth Medical School on December 28, 2009 at 10:30am EST

  • I guess I missed you, Josh, at the GameStop on Saturday. While you were busy with your anthropological study of teenage-boy culture, I avoided going in to the packed store, choosing rather to wait calmly in the car while my teenage son looked for a game.

    My own observation of teenage boys and game technology is that the Xbox features of providing the ability to play with anyone anywhere and to have voice chat with any other Xboxer open new social avenues. I think the boys are getting their cultural interaction right in the same medium as the games without the need for GameStop. I have also observed Xbox voice chat being used for academic collaboration.

    I think I would like to see those college students using the new gym for some physical activity. And after having visited multiple colleges recently, those new food areas seem to really make things more pleasant. How about the college library having a video game section?

  • more data
  • Posted by Anne Marie Gruber , Asst. Director for Library Instruction & Public Services at University of Dubuque on January 1, 2010 at 5:15pm EST

  • The following article might be of interest. The same journal has published several other articles on this topic. Contact your library for help accessing the full-text (available only by subscription).

    Winn, J., & Heeter, C. (July 2009). Gaming, Gender, and Time: Who Makes Time to Play?. Sex Roles, 61(1/2), 1-13.

    By the way, there is a lot of buzz about libraries developing gaming collections, programming, and instruction. See some examples: http://www.gamesinlibraries.org/

    My library has a video game collection for students, faculty, and staff to check out. We stock games for 4 different consoles, as well as 2 consoles. They are very popular, and are used for both leisure purposes as expected but also for academic use. For example, students in our aviation program suggested a flight simulation game that they can play when NOT in our actual flight simulators (also housed in the library).

    Our librarians also use gaming strategies in our instruction program. Email me if you're interested in more details.

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