Since the advent of home gaming systems, that often reviled hobby has been creeping its way into pop culture and the public consciousness. It seems that with the explosion of the Wii and casual gaming things have hit a near epidemic scale. A recent study by the NPD Group shows that gaming is an all time high in the United States. Almost three quarters of the population reports that they play video games in one form or another. That’s not to say you can expect to see your grandmother ‘pwning noobs’ on xbox live. Fifty percent report they play games online, and ninety percent of it is done through the PC. There’s probably a whole lot of World of Warcraft players in that total, but a good portion of the rest are likely casual gamers playing flash-based games like Bejeweled. Whether it’s due to fanboyism or the general expense of most systems, there’s a very low level of multi-platform ownership. Only three percent of people own two of the current-gen systems and only two percent report owning all three systems. The Xbox 360 has dominance of the non-pc online gaming community, with half of the console gamers reporting that they game through Xbox Live. Unshockingly the largest group of online gamers are the very young. Kids aged 2-17 represent forty percent of the online gaming community and are undoubtedly that way because of a lack of significant commitments like college, relationships and work. At least that explains why there’s so many squeaky voices screaming profanities in my ear every time I boot up Halo.