• by Aaron Baar , November 5, 2012

While the stereotype of the video game player is an 18-year-old(ish) boy holed up in his parents' basement for days at a time, the truth is that most adult gamers are more like everyone else: normal people who have jobs, bills to pay and significant others who want attention. 

Sennheiser Gaming (which sells headsets for video game players) is giving these people a chance to come clean with their wildest excuses to get out of their everyday responsibilities to play more games. (According to the company’s own research, the majority of adult video gamers live with a partner, have children and have careers. At the same time, they manage to spend 10 hours a week gaming.)

“We asked ourselves, how do these players get more gaming time?” Lars Nielsen, Sennheiser Gaming’s marketing and communications manager, tells Marketing Daily. “Naturally, we thought that some of them -- once in a while -- may need to come up with some 'creative excuses' in order to get their 'me-time' in front of their computer.”

Through the company’s Facebook page, Sennheiser Gaming has set up an online confession area, where people can admit to their worst sins, with a chance to win a trip for two to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas next year (along with weekly prizes given away through December). The company has already collected 400 such confessions, including excuses such as pretending the neighbors needed help moving or hiding in a cave of boxes while telling one’s spouse he was cleaning the basement, Nielsen says. 

The company created the promotion as a way to increase awareness among this subset of gamers that play often, but aren’t what one would consider “hardcore” gamers, Nielsen says. “These guys need headsets for different reasons than to win a game. They need headsets that can effectively block out outside noise, and keep the gaming audio inside the headset, so they don’t disturb their family while gaming,” he says. 

Sennheiser gaming is promoting the online confessional through a larger campaign it is running in several global markets (including the U.S.), as well as through banner ads, a new Web portal dedicated to its gaming headsets, and social sharing.