Are you an Enthusiast Gamer?

[frazered]

i get too much grief if i play games these days - it is not good for relationships!

[Andaho]

GRR, I should have thought about the poll options a bit more before I posted... too many people inbetween when I was hoping people would try ans answer the simple yes or no.

[nvening]

hmmmmmm, i was gunna say that i dont have enough time to but then realised the 1 1/2 series of stargate ive got through in the last week...

oh well, im on holiday having "me" time

[Nemz0r]

I use my PC for all sorts, I don't really game as much as I used to, but that may change with the advent of BioShock, Crysis and the Orange Box .

[Tigrom]

I play a lot of games.

I'm currently out of work too, so its even worse. However I also spend a lot of time using the pc for media and seem to spend forever trying to work out why photoshop doesnt do quite what I expected it to do. Most likely a brain/keyboard interface error.

[g8ina]

me\ is a complete NON gamer, where's my option

[kalniel]

Zero gaming is still less than 10 hours

[tigerboyce]

i would say yes, about 70% of my usage of my computer is on games

[Rosaline]

I selected indeterminate, as some weeks I don't game, yet other weeks I can get completely lost in a good adventure.

The 10 hour boundary to me is a little high for a certain half of the population. My own rough knowledge of other female gamers puts this figure as being perceived as quite heavy gaming, whilst male gamers I know think nothing of only ten hours of play a week.

Interestingly, though, it does actually seem that the ten hour mark is around the right position for the boundard between casual and hardcore. Here is a Recent study into gamer activities, and an older one into gamer demograpics, which nicely supports my thoughts. If you're really into the demographics, by the way, you may also want to check out the Daedalus project about MMO demographics (which differs from other games).

Also working on my experience, I'd say that to talk simply about the hours spent gaming is perhaps not the best way to judge the importance of gaming to a person, and how it would hence effect their hardware choices. Spending a couple of minutes here and there playing flash based games which eventually totals up to a dozen hours a week of gaming is quite a different creature to spending just six hours a week playing a fully modded Oblivion install that looks very pretty. I've also noticed similar trends with regards to the gender divide, with women sacrificing performance for high quality visuals, whereas most male gamers I know tend to obsess about their raw performance.

(hopefully it will let me post links by now...)