By Tara Walker
The strong connection between college students and video games are recognized by businesses who aim to capitalize on targeting such a market.
During a recent stop at the University of Louisville campus, the Game U Live College Tour had crowds of students braving the chilly fall weather to try out some of the newest Xbox 360 games on big-screen, high-definition televisions, and providing students not only with the ultimate gaming experience, but also free cases of soft drinks and prizes.
Spearheaded by Game Live Events, a video and computer software marketing company based in Sausalito, Cal, the 40 college national tour is part of an overall marketing design that will “expand product awareness, evaluate consumer response and increase sales.” “Kids playing video games, it makes sense,” said Drew Patterson, production manager of the Game U Tour. He feels there is a great synergy between the event’s three main components and offers a simplistic approach as to why the gaming tour is successful.
Firms do extensive research to find out what makes their target markets tick, but researchers in other professions are also interested in what draws people to seek out video games as a means of entertainment. And in particular, research has been conducted to examine the relationship between college students and gaming.
In 2002, under the leadership of Steve Jones, a senior research fellow with the Pew Internet and American Life Project, surveys were randomly distributed to students from 27 different colleges and universities across the country. In a study entitled “Let the Games Begin: Gaming Technology and Entertainment among College Students,” researchers were seeking to understand the role that video, computer and online gaming had on the everyday lives of the study’s participants.
Though the study was not conducted at the University of Louisville, several U of L students could relate to the results of the study, which were interesting if not surprising. 65% of the study’s respondents considered themselves regular gamers.
Sophomore sports administration student, Jared Baker, is classified a regular gamer, and admits to playing video games about 20-25 hours per week. Jared, however, does own an Xbox gaming console, which probably explains why he plays so often. Some of Jared’s friends looked on while he played Madden 2007 at the Game U Live event, and joked about the game giving him first-hand experience in his future career field.
An interesting finding of the study was one out of every five participants felt that gaming was a means of either creating new friendships or helping to maintain existing ones. Alternately nearly 60% of the respondents felt playing video games kept them company when friends were not around.
There were results of the study which found 48% of the participants were willing to admit their main motivation for gaming was to avoid studying or doing homework.
Those students are not necessarily the ones so attached to video games that they completely remove themselves from reality.
Junior sports administration student, Zach Ryan, said “it is a lack of motivation rather than an addiction to games,” that occasionally keeps him from focusing on his classes. Jesse Calhoun, a freshman biology student, said that although he sometimes enjoys playing video games, it is not always his actions that could keep him from getting studying done. ìIt is entertaining when you want to have fun,” Calhoun said about the two to three hours a week he usually plays games. “But if I am studying and my roommate is playing, it can be a distraction.”
Though nearly half of the Pew research participants admit playing video games can distract them from higher priorities, about two-thirds of the student-gamers reported hourly study habits that closely matched the general student population, 62% reported studying no more than seven hours per week, while only 15% of the respondents reported studying 12 or more hours per week.
As part of a society where technology guides so much how humans live their daily lives the Pew research study showed that the constant evolution of entertainment possibilities continues to involve video games. And for college students, gaming has become an integral aspect of the unique characteristics of college life.
