Gaming and Education vs. Gaming and Economics

Yesterday I had a lively conversation about computer games. We observed that the use of computer and console games peak in advanced economies of the world like United States, England, Japan, etc. At the same time we found that gaming use is limited in big countries like India and China. Why so?

It is easy to associate higher levels of education in advanced economies. It is equally easy to associate that the advanced economies also have advanced economic condition - meaning both disposable income and disposable time that allows the citizens to afford the costly consoles and games. Despite continued price wars, owning and using computer or console games easily can set one back by several hundred dollars. This means that only families or individuals who can afford the same will buy these gaming systems.

In United States or Japan, console games have been a stable diet for the past 30 years. Each generation of game consoles have grown the number of users who can play these games. Now easily we have a world wide penetration of 100M+ households with game consoles. I doubt if this penetration ever reached 1B mark! 1B+ mark is reserved for cell phones - more about that another day. There are numerous reported studies that indicate gaming can help brain to grow - especially games that involve strategy and tact. I had observed personally that several nerds (okay ... really smart people) have a very high disposition towards console games. These are also usually pretty educated people - who can earn and afford high priced gadgets like the console games. If indeed games foster education and easy learning - many do, why would the emerging economies not invest in getting game consoles?

A certain level of education guarantees certain level of economic livelihood and leisure time. Read Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (P.S.) for compelling arguments. Now if we look at countries like India or China, there is a strong desire for education. Parents invest a LOT of energy and money (may be not money in $$ terms) to educate their kids. At the same time there is no critical mass of economically affordable population to afford time and money to buy into the console lifestyle. Instead if I may call the current generation as the 'A generation' for the Asian kids, they are all learning to get educated and get settled well economically. Definitely the 'B generation' and 'C generation' - the youngsters of the 'A generation' will be able to afford more time and money to get game consoles ... paving path for new environment.

I expect that more game console distributions will happen alongside the growth in educated and economically settled population.

There is a massive counter argument to consider as well. Gaming happens when there is no other viable alternative even if game consoles were available. In United States, it is well proven over the many years of observation that the game players have other activities on the christmas day (celebrating christmas of course) or during big ball game days. In those days the console game usage declines a lot. Similarly we can expect the kids in India (if not China) having a better weather to play outside and not be huddled inside the home to play console games. Not to mention the continued power outage and that too planned power outages do not give the right environment for games to be played.

Perhaps with the arrival of 4.6 Billion phones, games will be a hit on the cell phones.