My problem was that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t find their margin of error, descriptive statistics, and just a well written methodology for their study.  It seems they keep that information private.  Which means you can only trust what they say, just so much.

A note on the type of study they are doing… it is essentially polling.  Normally in statistics, the higher your sample in relation to the size of the population, the less accurate your data is.  This is because as you keep drawing out specific people for your sample, you find that the results will be closer to the mean.  This site has a great explanation of basic stats.

I would have learned just as much in graduate level stats if I was taught the same way Mixing Memory teaches it.  Anyways, so in polling they are usually looking for a really high sample size.  They basically have their system down packed.  They know exactly how many people they need and from what demographics.  And sure enough you find they are amazingly accurate when you check their numbers.

However, as I said above, all the numbers both references throw at you is worthless without the descriptive stats from your study, and your confidence interval.  Without reporting this data, you cannot extrapolate your data to the population because you haven’t shown if your data is statistically significant.  Which is why the informal e-mail poll cannot also be extrapolated to the population.

Nielsen Poll Ratings are about as accurate in their final tally as trying to count the maggots on a carcass during full daylight in mid-July and tallying them too. That is to say, not very. They extrapolate their findings from 2000 homes to the rest of the population. What they don’t seem to take into account, is any sort of margin for error. Like for instance, what if NONE of those 2000 homes had a computer? What, the entire country has no computers? 

Waste. Of. Time.

Where the fuck are these polls? They can’t be very accurate, I didn’t participate in or even know of the existence of said polls.

It’s simply fucking amazing that TIME would publish something so incredibly stupid, but it is TIME, after all.  In this, we are agreed, Lev Grossman is an idiot.  Lev must be thankful for the good fortune of Global Warming, which apparently thawed him from a deep cryogenic slumber since he was obviously frozen somewhere around 1981 and missed the intervening years.

Video gaming is huge and it’s pervasive.  It’s on your TV, your computer, your phone, your notebook, your PDA, your hotel room, your coffee shop, and it’s getting even bigger [ref]:

A new study by ABI Research predicts a doubling in size of the videogames market by 2011, estimating revenues of USD 65.9 billion and highlighting a rapid increase in online and mobile gaming.

…

ABI projects 95 per cent year-on-year growth for the online market, including PC online casual gaming, which continues to show positive growth worldwide. Causal games provider PopCap Games and rival RealNetworks have both recently announced European expansion plans to meet the growing desire for quality web-based and connected casual games, and both companies have also expressed ambitions to more comprehensively capture the wireless gaming market – a segment which ABI believes will see substantial worldwide growth over the coming years.

Of course, I can’t wait for Halo 3.  Maybe Lev will be online so I can teabag him as he so richly deserves.  Ha!

Now, as I wave my hands, I’m back to my invisible subculture!

I mostly play D&D and other pen and paper role-playing games.  I have to say, having the crazy focus shifted from my demon summoning rituals to your psychotic rampage inducing pastime makes me feel much, much better.

Thanks. It’s from the bonus CD they included with their new release The Else. Probably the only song I like on the bonus CD.

Love your signature Les

I don’t do multiplayer (i play for storyline as and whe I feel the impulse)

several of the Final Fantasy series (particularly FFXII)

FF10 and 7 were quite thought inspiring, I thought 12 was just a glamouous re-hash of 9 and for the most part I didn’t know who the hell they were talking about (esp the judge magisters who looked the same when they didn’t take their armour off, and often there was only 1 refrence to an individual) – that said on the second play when you know what’s going on it’s interesting.

Who is red-ass anyway?

http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20061219/NYTU00719122006-1.html and
http://www.pewinternet.org/press_release.asp?r=112
are the references I cited. 
For fun, I just did a poll of all the users in my company (medical management and billing, typical employee is female, age 25-35) I polled 92 people and got 84 responses.  Asked what game-capable devices they have at home, 63% (54) have computers, 42% have a game console or portable game device, and 14% have neither.  There are no games installed on work PC’s, nor is there internet access, and only 26% have ever heard of HALO. None of them could recall any information as to the plot of HALO. FWIW, informal survey done via email form. YMMV.

Of course the 69% number includes people who play Solitaire. It may not be Halo, but a game is a game and my father-in-law puts in as much time on his computer based card games as I do in World of Warcraft.

You need to keep in mind that not all games are played on personal computers. There’s plenty of console and portable game systems out there as well, and if we include cell phones and PDAs, the 69% number is quite reasonable.

Perhaps it’s the group of people I work with, but out of the 10 people in my department only one of them hasn’t a clue what the basic storyline to Halo is, but even she’s heard of it.

The point remains that gaming has been mainstream for quite some time now and it’s pretty ludicrous to paint it as still being some fringe subculture at this point.