Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 27, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Until now, the online player has merely been portrayed as a problem case in the media: In Nevada (USA), the case of a couple had become known who severely neglected their two small children while the parents devoted themselves to the fantasy role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons”. This is a so-called MMORPG game (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), in which one slips into a particular role and often experiences adventures together with others in a virtual world over weeks, months or even years.
Reporting and discussion in Germany also mostly see the “online player as such” as someone who, with addictive tendencies, spends day and night in front of the screen. That this is not really the case is shown by a US long-term study: Since 1999, a survey of the media use of players of such MMORPGs has been conducted regularly under the name “The Daedalus Project”. More than 35,000 MMORPG players have taken part in the US study. The results refute the picture of the online addict drawn above and, on top of that, provide an extraordinarily interesting finding: The average gamer does spend a lot of time in the world of his online game – an average of 21 hours per week. However, at 7.7 hours he watches comparatively little television. Online players thus spend just as much time in front of “screen media” as the population average, where TV consumption amounts to 28 hours per week.
This in turn means that “screen media” compete much more strongly with one another than with other leisure activities (such as football or going out with friends). This could also be an explanation, for example, of why viewing figures in Japan have visibly declined since the sale of the Nintendo Wii console.
This finding is also confirmed when one looks at the gamers’ profiles on Xchar: Television plays almost no role in leisure activities. Cinema, sport and friends are represented just as much, however, as for every other “non-player” in the same age group. It is therefore also a goal of the Xchar community that online players get to know one another better by finding out who is actually hiding behind the game characters, that they find shared (offline) hobbies and can thus also benefit from their online friendships in real life.
“The finding that the media consumption of online players is not higher than average is very important to us – also for the image of MMORPGs and players in society. Of course, this should not lead to trivializing the problem of excessive gaming consumption”, emphasize the three Xchar founders Lukas Schönberger, Sebastian Rösch and Ravi Kamran.
The gaming community founded in May of this year has therefore set up forums in which gamers can exchange ideas and assist one another with tips. The users’ reports show: Even though many can report periods in which they played a great deal: The use of online games can nevertheless be reconciled for almost everyone with a job or education, friends and hobbies. Just as the consumption of 28 hours of TV per week can also be reconciled with a “normal” life.
