Don't question Gamette Jes V. about how much she games...

Scientists conducted a gaming survey of some 7,000 players who were logged into the game EverQuest II this year. With these statistics they discovered several interesting findings. One being the average age of the gamers surveyed was 31. And that playing time tended to increase with age. Which now brings in the sex differences…

The numbers showed that the female gamers actually logged more game hours (of Everquest II) than the males. The ladies had an average of 29 hours a week, versus 25 for the males, with the top players putting in 57 hours a week on the girl’s side, and 51 for the guys.

And another interesting thing, get ready for this…it looks like women are more likely to lie about how much they really play this game in particular. Researchers found that the gals tended to lowball how long they spend glued to the screen. (Surprise? And they make fun of all you World of Warcraft dudes who barely leave the seat to handle bodily functions! – notably called a ‘bio’.)

So there you go, when your gamer gal doesn’t answer her phone, and says she’s going to wash her hair, she actually may be tackling some high end mob in Norrath, anticipating how good it will feel to flash that epic loot in front of your hungry eyes. Go figure.

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(Gamespot) – It’s not uncommon to hear gamers jokingly praise their favorite games as “addictive,” but researchers are treating the issue seriously. A new paper from the National Institute on Media and the Family’s director of research (who also serves as an assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University) suggests that as many as 8.5 percent of gamers in the US qualify as addicted.

The paper’s author, Dr. Douglas Gentile, commissioned a Harris Poll survey of 1,178 US gamers between the ages of 8 and 18, asking them questions about games modeled after other addiction tests. Gentile asked respondents 11 questions about their gaming habits to see if the hobby disrupted their ability to function in various aspects of life. If a person answered affirmatively to six or more questions, Gentile considered them an addict, or pathological gamer.

One question asked if players sometimes skipped homework to play games. Others asked if they unsuccessfully tried to cut back on gaming time, played games to escape from problems and bad feelings, or ever stole money in order to play. Respondents could answer “yes,” “no,” or “sometimes.” Counting every “sometimes” response as half of a “yes,” Gentile found that 8.5 percent of the gamers surveyed had six or more “yes” answers. If “sometimes” was considered the same as “no,” that dropped to 7.9 percent.

“Pathological gamers had been playing for more years, played more frequently and for more time, knew more of the video-game rating symbols, received worse grades in school, were more likely to report having trouble paying attention in school, were more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with an attention-deficit disorder, had more health problems that were likely to have been exacerbated by long hours of playing video games (e.g., hand pain and wrist pain), and were more likely to report having felt ‘addicted’ to games and having friends they thought were ‘addicted’ to games,” he said. “Pathological gamers were also significantly more likely to have been involved in physical fights in the past year.”

Although the abstract for the article doesn’t mention it, Gentile’s paper stresses that his findings only show a correlation between pathological gaming and those factors, and nothing causal.

“It is certainly possible that pathological gaming causes poor school performance, and so forth, but it is equally likely that children who have trouble at school seek to play games to experience feelings of mastery, or that attention problems cause both poor school performance and an attraction to games.”

(EuroGamer) – A pair of scientists from Huddersfield University have discovered that racing games cause more agitation and aggression in players than shooters.

Rather than using their time to find a cure for cancer or an alternative source of renewable energy, Dr Simon Goodson and Sarah Pearson monitored 30 people as they played three Xbox 360 games – Project Gotham Racing, an unnamed first-person shooter and “a 3D table tennis game”.

Physical changes to the players’ heart rate, breathing and so on were monitored, along with their mental responses such as aggresssion before and after the gaming session.

The scientists found that PGR caused the greatest change in heart rate and brain activity, while the FPS caused the smallest change.

“Previous researchers have made sweeping generalisations about the nature of videogames. This study is one of the first to use one of the latest games consoles that have a much higher level of realism,” said the boffins.

“Surprisingly the results showed that the driving game made participants more agitated and aggressive than the game with graphic violence. Given the high levels of realism in modern games a re-evaluation of the relationship between videogames and violence is needed.”

Goodson and Pearson’s findings will be revealed at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference, which begins today at Brighton’s Holiday Inn. Might pop down.

Check out the conference programme for the full rundown. We’re particularly looking forward to the talk by P. Chassy of the University of Toulouse: “The purpose of the study was to quantify the mistakes that chess players of various levels of expertise make in ecological situations. The quality of 311,722 moves made by 8,000 chess players was assessed.”