Lunchtime Discussion: Average

I know I’ve talked about it before, but I really don’t play that many games. If you break down my average hours it’s probably about 5 to 10 hours a week, but that equation only balances out like that because when I do play it tends to be in a few big blocks for a week or two. I can quite happily not touch my 360 for weeks at a time if it comes to it, I really need a reason to play. There has to be something I love, Halo: Reach at the moment, that I can sink my teeth into for a while.

See I don’t know if this makes me average or not. From a very anecdotal sample of the people I know it tends to range from people like Davs (otherwise known as djhsecondnature and my flatmate) who plays games most days, to people like my friends from college, who rarely seem to game any more. Where does the average lie? Does it lie with people that are casual hardcore, that is the people who only buy a few games a year – the new Call of Duty/Halo/Madden – but then play them in an obsessively hardcore manner? Is it in people who have a lot of variety? I honestly have no idea.

What about purchases? My low play hours couple up nicely with my low number of purchases. Of course sometimes I do get free games through, either to review or sent on to me when other members of staff have reviewed them, but as for actually buying stuff? Well I don’t really feel that the amount of time I’ll invest in a title makes it worth a purchase for me. With the lower price of downloadable titles I’m more likely to buy them, feeling that I need to spend less time with them to justify the outlay. Am I an outlier again? Should I be buying more titles? Am I missing out by being frugal?

So what about you? What are your gaming and purchasing habits? Do you think I spend far too little time with gaming? Am I an oddball? Should I try and make more time?