Just read an article in the NYT about gamers finding love in World of Warcraft. My immediate reaction was to think that there is now finally a venue for finding a date that is considerably more embarrassing than match.com, eharmony, etc. However, I did find the following point interesting:
With more than 12 million subscribers, World of Warcraft is one of the most popular games of its kind in the world (others include EverQuest, Aion, Guild Wars). That’s a sizable dating pool. Match.com, by way of comparison, has fewer than 2 million subscribers.Obviously, the two are very different, and match is way more focused, making the direct comparison almost worthless. Still, it is some sort of venue where the two people can get to know each other over a shared activity, so maybe that helps? Also, the other shocking fact from the article:
More than 40 percent of online gamers are women, and adult women are among the industry’s fastest growing demographics, representing 33 percent of the game-playing population — a larger portion than boys 17 and younger, who make up 20 percent, according to the Entertainment Software Association, an industry group.My reaction to this is that the sample here has to include people playing Words with Friends or something, because this cannot possibly be true of World of Warcraft. If it is, my vision of the world will never be the same.
