America : a Land of Gamers.

Personally, I am not big on games, not even online games but it seems that America is becoming a country of gamers.
There are now just about 300 million Americans, do you you have an idea of how many play games?

Well, about 177 million Americans are active gamers, that's a majority of people (59%) - out of which 56% play some form of online game. That's 65 million people and that is a HUGE number .
Those are at least, the numbers given in this new study by the Nielsen Entertainment's third annual Active Gamer Benchmarl Study. (see here)

The most surprising result is that a majority of those online gamers are actually females (42 million or 64%) and a significant part (8%) are 45 or older.

The study also indicates that online games play an increasing social role in connccting people together.

“We see every day how important online gaming is in terms of connecting people and bringing communities of gamers together. [O]nline gaming has the power to unite gamers across the street and/or around the world.” said Emily Della Maggiora, Nielsen Interactive Entertainment senior vice president in a press release.

Well, I suppose there are even more Americans who watch television every day and yes, games are probably better in terms of social interaction than sitting in front of your tv screen. In fact, it all seems quite nice and positive, "connecting people, bringing them together" but I can't help wondering what sort of exchanges do online gamers actually have? Is there really much real social interaction? Do they really get to know each other that way? It may bring them together but for what purpose exactly, just intense pleasure or simple distraction?
It is as if the Internet had become in part a sort of global Circus Maximus of our time, and tha's fine but that is nothing to get so excited about either.