On a boring afternoon, after I got sick of being owned on COD4, I spent some time on one a social forum online and decided to ask whether there are any gamers in the crowd. I posted a new thread looking for gamers but the turnout wasn't that great. One of the respondents said that it was a waste of time and I found myself disagreeing with him VERY much. I wondered whether I disagreed with this person just because I am a gamer or something else. So I decided to make a new thread on that website as well as on this one and see if I would get different results. More importantly wanted to see what the reasons behind the answers would be on both sides. So here are the results of this experiment.

Before I discus the results, I think I need to give a description of the two crowds.

1. The gamer crowd

This is pretty straight forward. I posted the question on this website. Most of us are gamers right? Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

2. The non-gamer crowd.

This crowd is very very diverse. I have no idea who the people are but I know that there is no general "average" There are all kinds of people here. Living in different countries, some are students others are working professionals. I think most people are educated though, because many know at least one foreign language. As I mentioned there are a few gamers in the crowd as well but the forum is just for socializing no special interest.

The first thing that struck me is the difference in how much the two crowds cared about the issue. In about 10 days the non-gamer thread got 350 views (I don't know if these are unique or not) but I only got 26 responses. Within about 4 days the gamer crowd gave more than 100 responses. Granted, that gamespot.com is a much much larger website than the other forum, I still think that the non-gamer crowd generally didn't care about the issue. And I can definitely say that the gamer crowd did care – a lot. The responses were very strong very interesting. One of the gamers did say that earthworms, wouldn't care about whether it's a waste or not. True, they probably wouldn't. But I don't care about what earthworms think, so I'm still interested in the results. :D

So the question was. "Do you think PC/Console gaming is a waste of time?" Here are the results.

Non gamers

Yes 69% [18]

No 4% [1]

Can't say/Little bit of both 27% [7]

Gamers

Yes 14% [20]

No 63% [87]

Can't say/Little bit of both 23% [32]

Ok, it's probably not the most reliable statistical analysis, but I think the difference in perception of gaming is pretty clear. In general, gamers agreed that if the person enjoys it, it's just like any other form of entertainment, and hence not a waste of time. There were even some pretty philosophical respondents who suggested that utility of time spent does not have to be tangible. In other words if you are not earning money, or "doing something useful" it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a waste of time.

Most non-gamer respondents on the other hand, saw gaming as clearly a waste of time. Mostly because, of that utilitarian view of time spent. Some were even embarrassed to admit that they were playing even though they are not children any more. And of course there was the usual "gaming-makes-children-violent" argument.

I think there are many reasons for such a difference in perception about gaming. But I wonder if one of these reasons could be the following. I just finished reading this book. It talks about "right brain thinking." Fascinating stuff. But what's more interesting is that one of the exercises that Daniel Pink, the author, prescribes is gaming. I thought it was really cool that gaming, somehow enhances the abilities of your mind and can make you think very differently. Pink gives some offers some pretty good evidence. It's not just about hand-eye coordination, it's about imagination, empathy with the character and creativity. The author suggests, that these aspects help develop the sort "right brain thinking" that can help you see the big picture of things and be very successful and happy. The military and even the doctors started to rely on gaming to nurture those aspects in their audiences. The earthworms would certainly not care about any of this but I think they probably should.