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Figured out the disconnect between MMORPG.COM forum posters
Reborn17
Member Posts: 414
I was reading some forum topics and just had to wonder why if someone likes a game they need to try and shout down someone who doesn't? Do any of these games sink or swim based on some forum post? If I'm playing a game I like, I have no interest in anyone else's opinion about it, I like it, that's all. If someone else doesn't like it, God bless em, that's their choice. What does that matter to me? When I was playing an mmo I never even visited forums unless something specific was needed, but I think I've figured it out. Age. According to The Entertainment Software Association the average U.S. gamer is 35 years old and has been playing for 13 years, but according to Quantcast 50% of MMORPG's visitors are ages 12-17! 40% are ages 18-34, a range which I think is too broad and should be cut in half. Let's say for the sake of argument, half those 40% are 18-26 and the other half 27-34, that would mean that 70% of MMORPG.com's U.S. visitors are under the age of 27 and therefore not average U.S. gamers. In fact males under 17 make up only 18% of all gamers in the U.S. This would explain the lack of perspective I've seen in these posts and the general asshattery of some of the responses given to legitimate questions and why some posters care so much about whether someone thinks their game is good or not, because their like 15 yrs old and think it really matters. Somehow, though I knew a lot of the posts had to be kids, I would sorta subconsciously see forum posters like players in the game, mature adults having some fun, but its quite the opposite. Very liberating. At least I no longer need to pose the question.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Comments
I also think that a lot of the people who are happy with their games, spend much of their free time playing those games.
Whereas people unhappy with the current state of gaming (or what's available), aren't playing those games, and thus have a lot of spare tiem to grouse on message boards.
(Me, I'm playing one right now, SOTNW, since the characters fight on their own, I can surf at the same time. Though as I was typing this, one of them died.)
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
I agree. If it was a real meeting to discuss MMOs and I saw the room was full with teenagers I would just smile and walk away.
Me too actually
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Must.... not ... troll....
....can't.... resist.....
You've successfully over-simplified a deep socio-economic scenario to a paragraph of statistics, grats.
--
Note: PlayNC will refuse to allow you access to your account if you forget your password and can't provide a scanned image of the product key for the first product you purchased..... LOL
BINGO!
Not to mention the "Let's say for the sake of argument" stats he made up on the spot..
Do it better, if you can.
Ah,of course, and you bringing little more than a pseudo fallatial avatar name to go with you're pseudo intellectual argument contributes what exactly to the argument? Deep socio-economic scenario? The demographics are what they are, no one is questioning why. Oh and for those who seem to struggle with math and/or reasoning (donjn), if a group is described as a certain percentage of a population over an age range, simply creating a median score (by finding a middle number) is a statistically acceptable way of dissecting the data if we have limited information. I don't have enough info to say with any certainty whether the population of 18-34 yr olds is weighted more to one end or another, so I split it down the middle. Duh. The point being that the less mature crowd will act and react in ways that differ from game interactions with average, more mature, U.S. gamers making the vitriole over video game preferences more understandable. I do accept, however, Grim that you are an ignoramus, and no doubt loving it, so please don't feel you have to respond with any sort of actual contrary data or an intelligent counter argument to at least maybe sway any reader, including possibly myself, to your side because as we all know you're "l33t" and "PWN N00bs" like me, right?
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
First off there are several large assumption in your post
1. The median is an acceptable statistical number. It is not. This does not tell us how many of those gamers are over or under that age, a mode would be a much more accurate representation of those numbers. You can say this is acceptable if the information is limited. A more acceptable method would be to simply say there is not enough information to make an informed intelligent response and so no interpretation can be given based on this.
2. Your assumption that most MMORPG members are under 27 and therefore not in the U.S. You are again assuming that 1, the numbers stated previously are accurate, and when only getting them from one source with little information on how they are collected this is a big fallacy
b. It may simply be the fact that 27 year olds gravitate to this site
c. Or that MMORGP is such a small percentage of the U.S. gaming that MMORPG’s numbers do not affect the average age of U.S. gamers in any significant way.
d. So what if they not from the U.S. most MMO’s are played on a world market, so who cares where they are from, or who plays them. They are all (most) in the same markets, making this point about where they from absolutely pointless.
e. Finally you have unsuccessfully (sp – can never spell that word right) equated age with maturity. This is rarely accurate and even less accurate when used in an anonymous setting like on the internet.
So overall the stats and reasoning here are uninformative and unreasonable.
Venge Sunsoar
I do not believe games live or die by forum posts. But forum posts do give you a sampling of how some gamers feel about a game.
Forum posts are a symptom, but not a cause.
1. I could ignore it, but I didn't, so in order to not ignore it, i included it as a loose approximation.
2. a) I'm not assuming they're not in the U.S. cuz of their age. 570k of the 1.1M unique visitors a month are in the U.S. Half of all the visitors are between 12-17. Anything i'm saying is pertaining to my observation that there seems to be a lot of posters that care whether someone likes their game or not, which seems an immature thing to do. I then look at MMORPG'.com's demographics and see its an extremely young population overall. My point is that information makes the reactions make more sense. Also re statistics I've heard the similar numbers from Nick Yee but if you have contrary ones, please fell free to post them.
b.???
c.My whole point is that MMORPG.com's core population doesn't fall into the average U.S. gamer's demographic, so yes its skewed numbers are too statistically insignificant to effect the average numbers.
d. My issue here is age of the posters vs. the average U.S. player's age and that population of teenagers are very different in their perspectives and actions than a mid thirties U.S. player.
e. To say there is no correlation between age and maturity is a personal bias you have, don't state it as fact.
Your rebuttal, though more reasonable, doesn't really disprove my argument, that I see immature responses and then look at the demographics and see an immature (agewise) populace, not saying some of the older players aren't immature in behaviour, just that the demographics make some of the reactions make more sense.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
1. I could ignore it, but I didn't, so in order to not ignore it, i included it as a loose approximation.
2. a) I'm not assuming they're not in the U.S. cuz of their age. 570k of the 1.1M unique visitors a month are in the U.S. Half of all the visitors are between 12-17. Anything i'm saying is pertaining to my observation that there seems to be a lot of posters that care whether someone likes their game or not, which seems an immature thing to do. I then look at MMORPG'.com's demographics and see its an extremely young population overall. My point is that information makes the reactions make more sense. Also re statistics I've heard the similar numbers from Nick Yee but if you have contrary ones, please fell free to post them.
b.???
c.My whole point is that MMORPG.com's core population doesn't fall into the average U.S. gamer's demographic, so yes its skewed numbers are too statistically insignificant to effect the average numbers.
d. My issue here is age of the posters vs. the average U.S. player's age and that population of teenagers are very different in their perspectives and actions than a mid thirties U.S. player.
e. To say there is no correlation between age and maturity is a personal bias you have, don't state it as fact.
Your rebuttal, though more reasonable, doesn't really disprove my argument, that I see immature responses and then look at the demographics and see an immature (agewise) populace, not saying some of the older players aren't immature in behaviour, just that the demographics make some of the reactions make more sense.
b. Is the z factor, the third variable. Meaning you neglected to ask, "Is there anything else that could account for your numbers."
e. It is not a personal bias, nor a fact, nor did I state it as fact. In fact you implied that the opposite was a fact when you said this:
"In fact males under 17 make up only 18% of all gamers in the U.S. This would explain the lack of perspective I've seen in these posts and the general asshattery of some of the responses given to legitimate questions and why some posters care so much about whether someone thinks their game is good or not, because their like 15 yrs old and think it really matters. Somehow, though I knew a lot of the posts had to be kids, I would sorta subconsciously see forum posters like players in the game, mature adults having some fun, but its quite the opposite. "
This very clearly implies mature postings with age. If it were a fact, then it would always be true. To disprove this all you have to do is find one old immature person, or one young mature person. Know anyone like that? You probably do, we all do, therefore that theory has been disproved. All you can then say is a greater probablity.
My rebuttal wasn't intended to disprove your argument, merely point out that to make an asumption based on the infomation provided is bad, the assumptions are too large, the data being pulled is too small, and from too few sources. You could very well be right, but it is not really supported by the data.
Venge Sunsoar
Its official Venge. YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, PERIOD. So this will be my last direct comment to you seeing as you seem to get off on being the "untroll" of trolls.
b. Why I am repeating this for you're benefit I don't know, but I am in no way talking about WHY the populace is comprised primarily of younger gamers and therefore not average U.S. Gamers, just THAT it is. Unbelievable ...
c. Yes mental and physical maturity do correlate. Ever heard of a bell curve?
"The standard normal distribution is the normal distribution with a mean of zero and a variance of one Carl Friedrich Gauss became associated with this set of distributions when he analyzed astronomical data using them,[1] and defined the equation of its probability density function. It is often called the bell curve because the graph of its probability density resembles a bell.
The importance of the normal distribution as a model of quantitative phenomena in the natural and behavioral sciences is due in part to the central limit theorem. Many measurements, ranging from psychological[2] to physical phenomena (in particular, thermal noise) can be approximated, to varying degrees, by the normal distribution. While the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are often unknown, the use of the normal model can be theoretically justified by assuming that many small, independent effects are additively contributing to each observation. The normal distribution is also important for its relationship to least-squares estimation, one of the simplest and oldest methods of statistical estimation.
The normal distribution also arises in many areas of statistics. For example, the sampling distribution of the sample mean is approximately normal, even if the distribution of the population from which the sample is taken is not normal. In addition, the normal distribution maximizes information entropy among all distributions with known mean and variance, which makes it the natural choice of underlying distribution for data summarized in terms of sample mean and variance. The normal distribution is the most widely used family of distributions in statistics and many statistical tests are based on the assumption of normality."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
Basically this is stating that all measurable characteristics of any population fall into a range, and the actual population density, over that range, increases the closer you get to the average and then decreases the farther you get from the average. So your "If it were a fact, it would always be true" assertion is incorrect at best, willfully ignorant at worst. I mean lets say you have a job, thats a fact, is THAT always going to be true. Live in the States? Probably not. A few young people act mature and a few older people act immature, does that mean age and maturity are in no way correlated? Then why are children deemed "mature (or immature) for their age"? Why are their developmental stages that children go through, yes including their brains, to get to adulthood? Is a 5 yr old as mature as a 17yr old? Based on your "Behavioural Psychology for Dummies" study, I'm sure it may seem they are, but they are not. Will there be exceptions to the rule? Ever heard that saying? Exceptions i.e. atypical examples, yeah, but as a rule their is a maturity gradient that young people are distributed over vs age, a gradient with a lower mean(or average) than an older population.
Its fine your rebuttal wasn't meant to disprove my argument, but in what way did it prove your own? Did you bring one bit of data to show mine was inaccurate? if these organizations monitor these industries and are generally considered as reliable sources and quoted, I'm sure whatever they've got is fine for a forum post. I did also mention they fall in line with Nick Yee's research, a dude I thought needed no further introduction since his gamer research is so well known. Venge, I put in the effort to look for info so as to not to just post my assertion without evidence, you could do the same, since you seem so offended I would dare say there is any correlation between age and maturity, or that a populations variance from the norm making its variance from normal behaviour make sense, but since I don't plan on responding to you any further, think whatever the heck you wanna think. There are enough ignoramuses, like ste2000, to parrot whatever baseless ideology you wanna spout, so feel free.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Too much information, all of is suspect.
Here's what I've observed in the real world. My son is almost 16 and has been playing MMO's for about 8 years now.
He has about 10 close friends in the RW who play MMO's with him. (male and female).
Not one of them has ever heard of MMORPG.com nor would bother to visit nor post in a forum such as this, despite the fact they do love posting on Myspace and other chat areas. Forum posting is the province (for the most part) of older gamers, and not the young as you seem to think.
I would challenge your assertions based on these observations and state that I do not believe the average age of posters here is anywhere near the ones you have deduced from your reasoning. I think it is much higher.
Not quite sure why you are getting so stressed out when other posters disagree with you in an intelligent manner, perhaps you are too young to hold these sort of conversations?
People like to root for a winning team, that's why they talk up their favorite games and run down others. No different than folks who root for their favorite professional sports teams while talking trash about their opponents. Same concept, just applied to MMO's instead of sports.
Don't try to overthink this stuff so much, the explanations cannot be boiled down to simple mathmatics.
BTW, to those of you who said you'd walk away from a discussion with a room full of teenagers, you're the ones showing a lack of maturity, teenagers actually can have quite a good deal to talk about (I'm on the third one that I've raised now) and sometimes you need to take the time to listen.
But someday when your older you'll come to realize that.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Not sure if it has been said here already but most young gamers lie about their age just "in case".
sdfsdfsfdsdfsfd
I had to laugh at this post, but not because I thought it was funny, or ridiculous, but because of the pure simplicity of TRUTH.
I'm 45 years old, and the mother of three, ages 18-20. I've raised three teenagers. Youth does not always equate with immaturity on an intellectual level, and being an adult certainly does not equate with maturity in matters of intellect or emotion. Age has more to do with physical maturity, for the most part, than either emotional or intellectual maturity. Your BODY matures with age. Whether you mature emotionally and intellectually with age, is not entirely predetermined, sadly. Those aspects of maturity are governed less by time, and more by nurture, education, and aptitude, among other contributing factors.
None of my children play MMORPGs, nor would any of them even remotely consider posting on a forum. They're simply not interested in "debating" anything other than their curfews (which considering their ages, are very liberal), for the most part.
Now, I'm not saying that my own children, are necessarily the "norm," and I have no statistics to quote "proving" my point. However, I think logic alone dictates that there is obvious faulty assumption being made when generalizations about age, maturity, and participation on forums is concerned. User statistics can even be skewed by false information and other variants.
I agree with the above quoted poster on the "over-thinking" of this topic. Human beings, by nature, and regardless of age, are simply going to disagree on ANYTHING that has points of debate. No two people are the same, and no two people are going to like or dislike exactly the same things, including games.
As an adult, I enjoy the sometimes heated debates on these boards, and I'm also guilty of sometimes wanting to "knock some teeth" when I see comments that I perceive as idiotic, BUT.....they certainly don't sway MY personal opinions and beliefs. Posts that oppose my opinion that actually seem to have some merit, will however, stimulate my thought processes.
Afterall, MOST adults are able to come to their own conclusions about most topics of discussion based on their own experiences and research. Lest we forget, however, there are younger people that are also able to think for themselves.
Anyway, I'm rambling. I just wanted to "high five" the above quoted poster for posting something so simple, basic, and full of truth. Far too often I think we dissect things in an attempt to find "truth" and often come up with something diluted and much less truthful than the most simple explanation.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Let me guess. If no people say something negative about game then everyone will come to forum to post all games are as good as equal. Even a good game downgraded to a bad game.
Huh?
I didn't understand any of that comment, and I can't figure out how it even relates to any singular post in the entire thread. O_o
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I have to say:
I know several young people who play MMOs. They play the games not the forums, they aren't looking for a verbal fight or debate, they just want to play a game that is enjoyable. If the ganme is no longer enjoyable, they go elsewhere, no forum whinning or crying involved.
I find it suspect that the "Holy-Roller" OP doesn't mention his own age, or post it in his profile, you would think he would be proud of the "mature age" he has achieved. Maturity does not neccesarily come with age though, I have met plenty of 30 year olds I wouldn't consider mature, I have met 50 year olds that would embarass a 15 year old with their maturity level. And of course one of the most mature people I know is an 18 year old that has taken care of his crippled father for 4 years.
My opinion is thus:
IT is all about the anonymity of forums. People can behave as crappy as they want without any real repercussions here on the forums. regardless of age. If you want proof of that, take a look at the Age of Conan forums, every poll taken there shows that the majority of the posters are over 25 years old, yet that place is a bastion if immaturity and potty humor.
Bottom Line:
If you are not mature enough to handle immature talk, infantile behavior and a few snarky comments, there is a chance that forums are not your style.
Gaming happens in a virtual realm, so it is only natural the debate, flames, etc. occur within a virtual medium. As someone mentioned, talking games up/down is kinda like debating sports. This fact irritates me but it's natural human psychology.
Personally, if I like something I will say so. If I don't like it, I will also give my say. I'm on no one's team but my own. My opinion may matter to no one, but it matters to me enough to post, and if others agree/disagree it is inconsequential, except that collectively our opinions shape this forum and the mmo community.
People who don't think forums matter are naive. But some people are not communicators, and it is to their detriment in games and in life as those who speak loud enough will be heard eventually, while those who are silent get taken for granted.
You did try to explain that the numbers for here seem to not follow the average U.S. gaming age, but once again you did not apply real logic. You used a median number to verify your point, when a median does not verify anything.
A bell curve does show a normal distribution curve but it become less accurate when looking at smaller populations, of which gamers are, and extremely inaccurate when looking at subsets of smaller populations of which MMO's are, and this is site is. So once again a bell curve is not very valid.
My point was only to show that your sources are too few, the information extracted too broad and so to make a generalizing statement which you made is completely based on unsound data.
Argue it all you want, your data is still to vague from too small a source. You cannot extract anything relevant, meaningfull or substantial from it. The only thing you can say is this is interesting and more studies should be done regarding before any conclusions can be gone.
Sheesh take a stats class or a research class.
Venge Sunsoar