Tuesday, September 09, 2003

By Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Mark Murawski has lots of hobbies. He reads, builds model rockets and spends several hours each week plunked in front of the TV. He also mountain bikes on occasion and loves going to movies.

	(Illustrated by Ted Crow, Post-Gazette)

His favorite recreational activity, however -- and the one he spends the most time doing or thinking about -- is playing video games. Any kind, any time.

The family room of his Green Tree home holds not just an XBox, but also a Sony PlayStation 2 and a Nintendo Game Cube, all three hooked up and ready to play. A Game Boy Advance with 30-odd games sits upstairs on a desk.

Then there's the basement game room.

This subterranean treasure-trove holds more than a dozen more systems, including an original Nintendo NES, a Sega Dreamcast, Atari Lynx and Murawski's personal favorite, a Neo Geo system from 1989. Close at hand is a bookshelf packed with hundreds of console games.

"If there's something that's gaming-related, I have it or I had it," he says, "or I've made a conscious decision not to have it because I don't think it's any good."

So what, you're thinking. Don't most 20-something single guys play video games?

Well, sure. Only problem is, Murawski isn't some recent college grad looking to unwind between dates or job interviews while living in his mom's basement. He's a 31-year-old married software engineer. And he's got lots of company.

As Murawski so aptly illustrates, video games -- whether they're played on a console, computer or in "real time" against other players via the Internet -- don't appeal just to teenage boys. They're also incredibly popular with people in their 30s and older.

The average age of a video game player is now 29, says the Entertainment Software Association (www.theESA.com target=new). Nearly one-third of the most frequent console users are over the age of 30. Even more surprising, a full 17 percent of game players are over age 50, up from 13 percent in 2000.

While baby boomers tend to spend their entertainment dollars on more passive activities such as films and plays, the trend makes perfect sense, says ESA president Doug Lowenstein.

"People in their 20s and early 30s grew up with computers, and as they got older, the Internet," he says. "So it's always been a regular part of their lives."

Murawski, who's been playing ever since the Atari 2600 system came out in 1977, when he was just 5 years old, would agree.

"We think of video games the same way some people think of movies," he says. "It's not a child's toy you're going to grow out of."

Not only that, but playing video games is a favored social activity for many of today's older gamers. Murawski and a group of college buddies, for instance, convene every couple of months to try out the latest games. On a recent Wednesday, they gathered to play the weapon-based fighting game "Soul Calibur II," which Murawski had paid for a month in advance at Electronics Boutique in Monroeville and which had been released -- finally! -- just that morning.

As several pizzas cooled in the kitchen, they took turns trying to slay one another's animated characters with swords, hooting with excitement and talking trash.

"If you can be arrogant or flamboyant about it, that's good," says Mike Bennett, 31, of Cranberry.

Later, Murawski and wife Gail slipped down to the basement to play an old favorite, "Crazy Taxi," on his Sega Dreamcast. Though the 31-year-old homemaker rarely played video games before she met her husband, his passion for gaming won her over and today she plays several times a week. She's in good company: 43 percent of game players are women, according to the ESA.

"It's like anything else you get into," Gail says.

While she favors simulation games such as Nintendo's Animal Crossing and The Sims, one of the best-selling video games of all time, she doesn't need to wrap her hands around the controllers to have a good time. Sometimes, it's enough simply to watch her husband play action-adventure and role-playing games like "Tomb Raider" and "Legend of Zelda."

"If he doesn't catch something, I might," she says. "It's like watching a movie unfold."

The main attraction of many games is obviously role-playing -- kicking bad guys as Tomb Raider Lara Croft, taking a high line like race-car driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. or catching a bomb like wide receiver Hines Ward. And even those who do the real thing aren't immune to the fun of a video simulation.

Ward and half-back Jerome Bettis are just two of the Steelers known for their game-playing skills during tournaments in the players lounge at the team's South Side facility. On "Madden NFL 2003," they can -- and do -- throw or hand-off regularly to their video counterparts. The Steelers are also partial to NASCAR racing games and even awarded a champion's belt to whoever among them won a boxing game a few years ago.

	Mark Murawski, right, watches as Mike Joyce and Mike Bennett (not pictured) play "Soul Calibur 2" in Murawski's Green Tree home. (Lake Fong, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

Other athletes are game fanatics, too. Pirates shortstop Jack Wilson had PlayStation 2 hooked up to one of four televisions in his Hummer H2 at spring training.

While habit and familiarity play a large role in video games' popularity, it's the games themselves -- with graphics that get better each year -- that keep veteran gamers coming back while also drawing in new players.

As Lowenstein puts it, "The games have grown up with the audience, so there's no reason to walk away from them."

And as video game technology continues to advance, the appeal should only grow.

"This industry hasn't even begun to reach its limits," says Lowenstein.

It's already reaching players like 35-year-old David Guest of Mt. Lebanon. Though he had an old Sega system many years ago, he gradually got away from gaming. PlayStation 2's improved graphics, however, lured him back. Now, most evenings when he gets home from his job in collection management, he spends "alone time" playing video games.

Like many older players, Guest prefers titles that emphasize strategy, such as "Medal of Honor," which lets players re-create the military campaigns of World War II. But being a guy, he likes first-person shooter games, too, such as "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon."

"It kind of takes you away," he says, "and lets you do things you wouldn't or couldn't do in real life."

Diego Pokropowicz, a freelance editor and jazz musician from Ben Avon, is another non-teenager who only recently started playing video games.

The 43-year-old, like lots of baby boomers, played the occasional game of "Donkey Kong" and "Pong" while he was in college. Yet it wasn't until he got his first computer in the mid '90s, when the game "Dune" was all the rage, that he got into gaming in a big way.

"I really liked the puzzle-solving aspects," he says.

Today, he usually opts for mature-rated role-playing games like "Diablo" and "Unreal." As for the blood and gore present in some of the action games he also plays, well, "that just a side benefit," he says with a laugh.

He's become so hooked over the past couple of years that most weekday mornings after he gets his 7-year-old twin sons onto the school bus, but before he drives his wife, Rebecca, to work, he sits down at the computer for an hour or so of gaming.

"My wife always asks me why I waste my time on this nonsense," he says. But for Pokropowicz, it sure beats watching TV.

"It's pure entertainment."

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