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The Aging Gamer
An anonymous reader writes "There is a short article at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle about the surprising statistic that a large potion of computer gamers are over 35. This actually makes sense, since many of them began gaming in the 70's. A short and semi-interesting read."
Now that I am over 35 (egad! Going to hit 28h soon!) I can actually afford the games. The ones I buy would have been a heck of a lot of allowance or lawns in my day. In fact, I think this age thing also has to do with the fact that games are much better than they used to be too - from a hardware and software point. When I first started out there wasn't much available for my $3500 Leading Edge...
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
This actually makes sense, since many of them began gaming in the 70's.
Right, this makes sense. If you are 35 and you are gaming, you must have been doing so your entire lifetime.
How about this instead: Someone who is 35 now was in their mid teens when arcade games were really big in the mid eighties. They started playing the games non-stop. Most of them did not play on computers at home, they went out to an arcade.
Fast forward ten to fifteen years. Home game consoles are so cheap and so powerful that they're better than going to the arcade. The same people who went to the arcade started buying the game consoles.
Which brings us to today. Believe it or not folks, I actually know some people who are over 35 years old, and they might actually fool you into thinking they weren't wearing Depends. Most of them still like doing the things they did when they were in their late teens and early twenties, which includes gaming.
Now, if the study had claimed that the average gaming age was 40 or 45, that would have been a little harder to swallow.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
> That is quite scary, considering that gaming is at an all time high right now...so, if in 20 years
> 90+% of gamers are over 35, i wouldn't be shocked....
Ummmm. That really doesn't make any sense. The birth rate isn't plummetting catastrophically. I teach high school - and I assure you that a large fraction of the 14-year-olds on down are quite hooked. They'll be 34 in 20 years, and I don't see any likely reason that gaming would stop gaining recruits. 10 or so to 35 is an awfully big fraction of the population, much more than 10% - even if they WERE underrepresented in the gaming group, they'd claim more than 10% of it. And I see such an underrepresentation as unlikely. A higher fraction of today's youth are gamers, for instance, than were gamers in the 70s.
Wrong. Being a bad parent would be not even knowing what your kid has been doing for the last two weeks. This guy knows. And if you force a kid to stop whatever they are doing for no good reason other than "because so elite said so" then they're just going to get pissed off at you and nothing's solved. Then the kid's going to be angry and forced to find something else fun to do before he was prepared to which sounds like a good path toward all sorts of problematic behavior.
You sound like you don't have kids yourself and you're one of the armchair parents like the ones that run this country. You know the type, the ones that think that they should have complete control over the raising of every child in the country yet can't manage their own family.