Cultural choices of game platforms

THE funny thing is the term "hispanic" is so loose that it can include many "black" people also...because Hispanic includes people from Central america,and parts of the caribbean(such as Cuba,Dominican Rep and Puerto Rico)...also i dont think they are saying that asians dont exist they just did not include them in the survey....

hey look, asians left out. again.

and this helps us how? the very people that conduct these things are themselves racist. race doesnt matter, why split us up?

and how can they say theyve intervied 15,000 of each race, when clearly the results show more hispanics and whites in every catagory except the none

That's a very interesting poll. Thought when I think Hispanic I think of Spain, my parents own a villa out there and I have only ever seen 1 game shop. Maybe its different in america. the image I have is that Spaniards are not gamers. Paris was worse. No game shops at all. Which was brilliant to get away from all that! I did buy Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland at Barcelona airport and Mario Classic GBA at Alicante airport though.

What am I saying now... Different counties, different races, different tastes. we're all better through diversity.

I don't understand how you can see outliers in those graphs but 15,000 is roughly the total number of participants. No word on the distribution over the 3 groups in this study.

Here's hoping to folks keeping the comments racist-free.

I think it is interesting to the SP have similar numbers to the GC and that there are no lines amoung those who want to play games where the most populat platforms are the most popular among all groups.

1. Race should not matter but people think it does because people do studies on race we can find ways of dealing with the problems we have. Also they asked over 15,000 total not 15,000 of each ethnic group.

very interesting poll, joystiq. I found it inteesting that hispanics and whites seem to have similar tastes, as lot of black people I know don't really play games that much and if they do it's PS2.

But you fail for not getting chris rock in on the act :D

I agree with others, race shouldn't matter. But since you've already decided to use it, why not include asians? I think there is a huge portion of asian gamers out there (Japan and America).

-John
http://www.deliveryblog.com/

#1: Different ethnic groups have different tendencies for purchasing. Being in the marketing industry, I know just how important it is to split people up in order to best accomodate for your demographic. It's unfortunate because who likes splitting up the races? No rational person does.

Does it mean advertisers have bias towards any group? No, of course not. It's hardly racism when it comes to selling products; the only reason people use these divisions is because they work better than others.

hmm more hispanics own a PSP than anyone else. i wonder why?

I'd prefer to see one of these but based on age, all on one chart.

Eh, I can't see any meaningful distinction between races on the graph. Everything seems close enough that the general lesson is to target no race in particular, because everyone plays.

The most I got out of the graph was a good chuckle over the N-Gage stat.

Hehehe.

Being hispanic, I own all the listed systems except for the n-gage. Video games and technology in general were the main reason that made me move to the US.

The way Americans label anyone who isn't black enough or WASPy enough adds a new level of bullshit to this "study." The range of people who could be called "Hispanic" is too vast and at the same time totally irrelevent when you consider that Spaniards are caucasian.

I believe hispanic typically refers to those with central American ancestry, most likely including ancestry from the original natives, like the Aztec or whatever group dominated the particular region.

That's what I think when I hear hispanic. Someone from Spain I would call Spaniard, not hispanic.

And I believe for most standard polls anyone who is at least 1/4 black(has at least one black grandparent) counts as black. That might be 1/8 though.

In North America Hispanic doesn't align with being from Spain; indeed the two have little to do with one another. Hispanic is a broad designation for a wide variety of peoples with ancestral roots in Latin America, which is a large group in North America. Racial groups are broken differently, but common classifications in the United States are Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American.

Those on this board who automatically shout about racism are missing some important issues. Data like this are important, because, for example, they catalog issues of access. Notice in the graph above that blacks have the lowest ownership of PCs. This is not just a question of gaming, but of information access. It is a measurable trend in the US that many minority groups don't have the same level of computer access as the majority Caucasian populace. This affects education and employment among other issues. However, as the graphs imply, groups are frequently almost equal when it comes to game console ownership. It is a trend that is important to discuss when confronting issues of access. Sweeping race underneath the carpet and complaining about racism whenever it is a component of a study is the surest way to guarantee that inequalities based upon race will never be addressed and rectified.

>The range of people who could be called "Hispanic" is too vast and at the same time totally irrelevent when you consider that Spaniards are caucasian.<

That's not even the bad one. By the census definition (as well as the boxes on, say, my law school application), Asian / Pacific Islander is one group.

Think about that for a second. My parents are from India. I'm Asian. My friend's parents are from Taiwan. She's Asian. Another friend's family is from Japan. They're Asian. Something like 60% of the world's population (and probably the same percentage of its surface area) is considered homogenous according to U.S. census laws.

At least here in Canada we sort of acknowledge that there's a bit more diversity to Asian culture.

apparently, Asians don't exist...

When you think about it it's no more ridiculous than grouping together people of German, Irish, English, Italian, Romanian, Czech, Greek, Spanish, Russian, Danish, Norwegian, ect. heritage into one large group of 'caucasians'.

It's a classification based on certain similar traits (whether it's appearance, or something more general like region). I don't see why people get so uptight about it. I know where I'm from and being grouped together with a mess of other people in polls or the census doesn't change that. Just think how Persians, Arabs and Israelis feel being grouped together as 'Middle Eastern'.

>It's a classification based on certain similar traits (whether it's appearance, or something more general like region). <

The thing is... what traits do my parents (both born in what was then India) have in common with my friends' parents who grew up in the Kyoto area? It's not the same region, race, religion, language, economic history, cultural background, or anything else. I think the only joint characteristic is "east of Istanbul."

I'm not overtly sensitive about it (after all, I didn't even check the box in the first place), but it's a ridiculously broad homogenisation of the majority of people on the planet. Saying "Asian" contains such a disparate group is far weirder than grouping Scandinavia with, say, the Iberian region under the "European" designator.

Just a statistical strangeness, and why I don't think adding "Asian" to this study (as suggested above) would prove anything.