World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Liquor, gambling and now gaming are good bets.

We've all read that World of Warcraft is somewhat recession proof, but it made some people really consider whether or not the whole gaming industry shares that economy-shrugging Teflon jacket. In today's Gaming and Culture section at CNET, Daniel Terdiman tackles the question of whether or not we should be putting our money into stocks such as gaming companies during these tough economic times. Even when individual games sell well, the parent company's stock is likely getting beat about the head and shoulders just for being publicly traded. As Daniel says:

”While the Dow's value dropped 28.16 percent from September 2 through November 17, and Nasdaq dropped 36.91 percent in the same time frame, six game industry companies (Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, Take Two, THQ, Gamestop and Nintendo) saw their share prices fall an average of 52.53 percent.”

Of course these numbers are prior to Wrath of the Lich King so take that with a grain of salt. There are some interesting points brought up about the timing of pending gaming chaos and it arriving after the hopeful bottom of the current economic downturn. But he does show how my interests tend to help buoy the economy in tough times:

”In the short term, then, there is ample evidence that the video game business may well prove to be stronger than most others. No one is going to do better than companies producing cheap liquor, of course, but in the technology world, it may be tough to identify a sector that could better persevere than video games. “

See, all of that Pabst is just for the sake of the country, I'm patriotic like that. Read the rest of the editorial at CNET.