I was pursuing several different ideas that led to this data set. One theme was the use of laptops vs. desktops. Within the MMO gaming sphere, there is a notion of “drawing spousal aggro” - spouses getting angry at gamers who spend the whole afternoon/night playing. In one of our PARC meetings, Bob Moore commented that the low technical requirements of WoW allowed gamers to play the game on a laptop next to their spouse while watching TV (i.e., increasing physical proximity via mobility), and might thereby lower their spousal aggro. But this interaction between form factor and social proximity led me to thinking about broader questions about whether gamers usually play alone (physically) or whether they usually play with someone else in the room. And given the number of gamers who regularly play with someone in their family, the next natural question was how many gamers play in a room where someone else is also playing.

Overall (N = 2692), 90% of respondents typically play on their desktops, while 10% typically play on their laptops. There were no gender differences, and the age differences were very mild (7% in the 12-17 group, peaks in the 18-22 age group at around 13%, and the rest averages around 9-10%).