Student Demographics - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 205

played on consoles such as Microsoft ' s Xbox 360, Sony ' s handheld PSP, and the

Nintendo Wii � and “ computer games � for those games played on PCs or Macs.

Some highlights you may find useful:

n 67% of households in the United States play computer or video games.
n The average game player age is 34.
n In 2010, 26% of gamers were over the age of 50.
n 60% of gamers are male; 40% female.
n Women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the
game-playing population (33%) than boys age 17 or younger (20%).
n Parents are present at the time that games are purchased or rented 93%
of the time.
n Parents report always or sometimes monitoring the games their children
play 97% of the time.

The occasional heated news report featuring some politician or civic leader
decrying the horrific numbers of pre-teen boys wallowing in blood and gore
without their parents

s subject is
wallowing in his own ignorance or outright fantasy. If the children wallow, they
wallow with their parents

' knowledge reveals instead that the report '

'

permission or indifference. And the numbers of
bloody shoot-em-ups has fallen dramatically in the past few years, eclipsed by
the casual and social game revolution.

As we know, the video game industry has undergone a huge sea change in the
past few years, beginning with the Wii on November 19, 2006, opening up
gaming not just to parents interested in bonding or monitoring their children s

gameplay, but also to parents interested in having fun themselves. Hot on the
heels of the Wii came the iPhone on January 9, 2007, with a catalogue of 200,000
apps, thousands of which were casual games. And the last nail in the shooters

'

'

coffin were the “ free � social games on Facebook that are played by millions upon

millions of players.

Pre-teen and pre-school children do play games of all varieties; some of them
most of us would consider entirely inappropriate for their age. And until the
invasion by casual and social games, teachers who wanted to use educational