Average gamer spends 1.8 years of their life button mashing

Gamers, prepare for a shock; you may be spending far more of your life playing games than you at first realise.

A survey of 1,452 “self-confessed” gamers, aged 18-40, has revealed that on average button mashers will spend 1.8 years of their lives button mashing.

The breakdown for that figure is as follows; after answering a series of questions, the average starting age for gamers was clocked at 9.1 years old. The gamers questioned racked up on average 9.2 hours of gaming a week, equating to 478 hours a year, or 19 full days. With those gamers on average stating that they’d give up games when they reached at the earliest 45 years old, given they began at 9.1 years old they’d manage 682 days of straight-gaming in a lifetime, or 1.8 years.

“As a site dedicated to gamers, we really wanted to look into how much time people really do spend playing video games,” said Simon Kilby, founder of the games price comparison site Playr2.com which conducted the survey.

“This easily adds up throughout the year. Whilst the average gamer spending 9 hours per week playing on the console doesn’t seem like much, 19 days a year certainly does; and 1.8 years in a gaming lifetime is a very long time indeed!

“I expect these times also vary depending on your gaming preferences. I’m sure that dedicated role play gamers will often spend many more hours in front of the console or computer, whilst gamers with a shorter attention span may have their fill with just a few short games per week. It all depends on your preferences!”

Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? As a keen gamer who also plays professionally in order to write reviews, I shudder to think how much time I’ll end up playing games over the course of my life. Not that I don’t enjoy it, but I’d probably be a Slash-like guitar virtuoso if I put as much time into studying music for instance. Factor in the boom in mobile gaming on smartphones, tablets and the like and that 1.8 years figure is sure to rise significantly.