Post by leunas on Feb 6, 2007 15:24:59 GMT -5
Australia's foremost games academic believes community attitudes to gaming's worth are changing fast, but policy makers are not registering the shift.
Dr Jeffrey Brand, Associate Professor at the Bond University Centre for New Media Research and Education, and author of the Interactive Australia 2007 study released yesterday, believes interactive entertainment is part of an historic culture shift away from the passive media that marked the industrial age.
Dr Brand says the change is occurring amid old fears, myths and stereotypes from some members of the community, but results from the study, including the rapidly increasing numbers of adult and female players, suggest that lingering negative stereotypes will not last.
"There is an emerging realisation that computer games contribute to literacy and numeracy, social skills, interest and drive for arts, sport and competition, logic, planning and self-control," says Dr Brand.
Screen Play's interview with Dr Brand is below...
Why are studies like this valuable?
When fundamental shifts occur in culture, we often don't recognize them until they are quite literally, history. I think interactive entertainment is an historic shift in culture away from the one-way media world that marked the industrial age.
The information age allows us to interact both for work and for recreation. The problem is that shift from old media to interactive media is taking place - like all cultural shifts - amid fear, old myths and lingering stereotypes foster misunderstanding about the changes people think are happening.
Interactive Australia 2007 is simply a way to help all of us understand what's going on before our very eyes, and under our thumbs, by documenting it in concrete terms. I think it's far better to know what is happening now so we can minimise the potential downsides and maximise the potential opportunities.
Why do you think gaming still suffers from the stigma that it is only for children or men who haven't grown up?
Many people think of gaming as a child's pastime: after all, gaming is playing and we have a bias in our culture that says playing is the domain of the child, it's not serious, not productive and certainly not respectable.
The reality is that children are less afraid of exploration and risk-taking and playing computer games is something that adults who are only marginally computer literate fear for lack of skill and lack of knowledge.
What's more, gaming in the early days, while born in computer labs and bars (places where adults "play") was embraced more by children than by their parents. Well, those children are adults now, and they have kept playing, they have become parents and these gamers know that computer games are just as adult as games of backgammon, bowls, cricket and chance.
Having said this, I think this stereotype is fast fading and my research is designed to document why. The average gamer in Australia in 2007 is 28 years old. In 2005 the average age was 24. If the trend continues, in 2014 the average gamer will be the same age as the average non-gamer: 42 years old. Right now in America and Europe the average gamer is just over 30.
Do you think the study reveals that games are starting to overcome some of the social stigma that used to apply, revealing a shift in community attitudes to gaming?
Community attitudes are shifting quickly but I don't get the sense that many policy-makers or many traditionalists have registered this shift - which is where the risk of not maximising the potential of games begins to become more acute.
However, as more gamers reach adulthood and positions of influence, including as parents, there is an emerging realisation that computer games contribute to literacy and numeracy, social skills, interest and drive for arts, sport and competition, logic and planning and, quite importantly self-control. This is quite contrary to the myth that games are mindless entertainment. Indeed, some are beginning to look back at the passive, linear and impersonal media of the 19th and 20th Centuries and cringe.
These changing attitudes suggest both increased familiarity with games and the rapidly changing nature of games themselves. In 2007, 79 per cent of households have a device for computer games. Moreover, in 2007 the vast majority of gamers prefer to play with others in the same room, then with others online. Only one in five want to play computer games alone, as single players. As a result, multiplayer and online games, family and social games are taking off.
Why do you think there is there is a disparity between the results of the survey and the typical portrayal of gaming by many sections of the Australian media?
I believe that one of the valuable functions of the media is to stir things up, to provoke debate and to compel busy people to stop for a moment and think about the complexity of the world around them. Unfortunately this function is sometimes simplified and stereotypes are used to get attention but not to provoke meaningful debate.
This doesn't happen just to gaming, right? It happens to practically all aspects of our complex society. And the Australian media are good at simplifying to the point of reinforcing stereotypes.
This will change, though, as the audience for passive media looks for more than old stereotypes. Indeed, it's already happening. My research shows that gamers don't play games to the exclusion of participation in sport, social relationships, exercise or hobbies, they play games to the exclusion of watching television and reading newspapers. No wonder the news media are hostile, gaming threatens them. And I predict that in 10 years the technologies that are built into games will be built into news delivery - including the ability to interact, query, probe, explore and question!
The last survey found the vast majority of Australians (88 per cent) support an R18+ classification for games. Do you believe this puts pressure on State and Federal Governments to implement the change?
There is no indication whatsoever that the government agrees with or is listening to the gamer community. This isn't problematic though. My research shows that the majority of Australians have little interest in classification and instead they get the games they want to play either in spite of or regardless of the classification scheme.
The irony is that although Australia is the only developed democracy in the world not to have an R18+ for computer games, the gamer community has used its high level of literacy, particularly computer literacy, to get games it wants.
Another way of putting this is that banning games gives them the oxygen of publicity. The games that are often banned here usually have received fairly poor critical reviews overseas and probably wouldn't sell all that well. But the games become popular here when adult gamers choose to exercise their sense of media freedom.
Were you surprised by some of the results?
Although this research extends my 2005 study, it also adds new information, especially about attitudes about games, leisure and play. I was particularly surprised by the jump in average age and in the proportion Australians gamers who are female (41 per cent). I was surprised that 8 per cent of gamers are seniors.
But these statistics don't tell the remarkable story. That story is simple. The only difference in terms of social behaviour and lifestyle between gamers and non-gamers is that gamers play computer games. Otherwise, they do all the same things in about the same proportion. They have the same social attitudes as well.
However, gamers have a much more positive view about the value of games for society and in the effects of interactivity in media experiences than non-gamers. In short, ignorance about computer games is not bliss, ignorance about computer games is fear... clear and simple.
What are some of the future trends in the Australian games market that you might be able to predict based on the two studies?
Based on the 2005 and 2007 studies, I think the proportion of women who play computer games will equal the proportion of men who play computer games within the next 5 or 6 years. The average age of gamers will reach the average age of non-gamers in the next 7 to 8 years.
I see gaming consuming more media time but not other leisure time; gaming will move from an activity that happens twice a week for about 90 minutes to an activity that happens four or five days a week for a couple of hours each go, particularly as more retired Australians take up games.
I expect, on the basis of these studies, that within a decade most games will be serials and micro-events as gaming moves online and off physical discs and cartridges. Australians will play games as they are released similar to the way audiences have watched television programmes as they have aired. The difference, of course, is that gamers will go to the games rather than the games going to them... gamers want to interact, not sit back.
Finally, I think games will be the subject of more news stories about the surprising ways in which Australians are innovating because they find remarkable uses of games, unlike the news stories of today which often take the position of games "potentially" causing harm to Australians. In other words, we will learn that interactivity is about control resting in the hands of the audience and that passivity of the 19th and 20th Century media took control away from it.
Posted by Jason Hill
February 1, 2007 7:10 AM
blogs.theage.com.au/screenplay/archives/004944.html