Gamers: Social, Educated, Employed, Fit

Just back from Canada to find this interesting article in today's issue of Canada's National Post that a new Ipsos study has found: "Video gamers high earners, athletic and dating." There is a ton of anecdotal evidence about this. My dad was featured among a few families in a 2006 Washington Post article by Mike Musgrove, natch. But my favorite news item of late was the Star Wars Galaxies news story profiling my old guildmate, Tigiar who has been playing Star Wars Galaxies for the past five years with his entire family. From the article:

What does a typical Star Wars Galaxies day consist of for you?
... I relog to a trader and RE for a bit or try and talk my daughter into REing for me. I usually get her all set up with the buffs and have shirts and power bits and mod bits all ready and she takes over and REs like crazy... I think her record is 35 - 35s with one power up, in 30 minutes! She is our main crafter and decorator and she has decorated most of the buildings in our city of Permanence , Tatooine. She's even decorated a few of the citizens' homes.

Boopi, my son, sticks to PvP and hard core PvE. He finds the ways to get stuff done and keeps me alive in PvP. Aliar, my wonderfully supportive wife, doesn't kill and hasn't cloned but maybe four times in over four years, and that was when we logged on her toon to make Mando in DWB... and got caught! She also loves to attend role-playing events, especially weddings and holiday parties. She REs too but usually my daughter is running her. I caught heck when she saw the RE arm we stuck on her!

Basically a day in SWG can be a whole day of our life. And a good day at that! It carries over to the dinner table at times. Aliar draws the line there on occasion.

... My wife is an educator and was against video games, but with the great community and great game she has turned 180 degrees. It might be the time she found my daughter with an Excel spread sheet trying to cap harvesters as an Architect at the age of 10, or the fact that Boopoi's typing skills have excelled, or just the plain fun she sees us all have.

Meanwhile, Blizzard announces today that World of Warcraft has now topped 11 million subscribers.

Wow.