Average Gamer Is 37 Years Old

kolbe writes "A new study from the Entertainment Software Association suggests that the average age of today's gamers is between the 37 and 41 years old. If true, does this mean that game studios should be adjusting their demographics accordingly? Is Generation X the next 'baby boomer' market for the gaming industry?"

Comments

its only the beginning

[DI4BL0S]

I'm sure as we go further into the age of technology this number will rise

Re:its only the beginning

[cappp]

The report itself can be found here(pdf). If you look on page 2 you'll see that they claim 29% are over the age of 50 - a demographic that dwarfs the 18% under 18.

I would however take the numbers with a grain, or truckload, of salt. The report nicely avoids explaining it's methodology and likely uses a broad definition of games (Farmville and minesweeper anyone?) and gamers (usually based on the age of the person doing the buying). Moreover it's an industry study which has an interest in projecting the idea of a mature audiance given certain legislative and legal challenges on the horizon.

Re:its only the beginning

[michelcolman]

Yes, when I was 25, the average age of gamers was about 25. Now I'm about to turn 37... I guess I'm just part of the gamer generation, and games keep being played by pretty much the same people. Those that grew up with the first home computers and are always impressed by the latest technologies. Those young ones just don't appreciate this stuff on the same level. They're only interested in all this social crap the internet's filled with nowadays.

Re:its only the beginning

[delinear]

This is key to understanding these figures. Is it based on sales? If that's the case, considering the cost of games these days, it's not surprising that the figures would skew heavily in favour of the age group that have jobs and kids (i.e. a lot of those sales are for under 18 year olds, but adding to the mid thirties demographic). Similarly, if we assume that a large number of under 18s are playing 18 rated games and lying about their age (and the industry are turning a blind eye because it's in their interests), that would also skew the figures, considering how many of the blockbuster titles are rated 18+.

Re:its only the beginning

[delinear]

Same here, but that doesn't explain the massive boom in the overall number of people playing games. Gaming is now socially acceptable, even just 10-15 years ago you were viewed as a total nerd if you played games. That either means there's some other explanation for this trend or all those people who laughed at us for gaming were secretly jealous.

Re:its only the beginning

[somersault]

Maybe those interested in this "social crap" are actually more interested in new technologies than you are? Games are old, "social crap" is driving the advancement of networking and database technologies.

I think it's more likely that you just prefer to play games than be particularly sociable. That's not meant as an insult, I'm the same. Though I do also spend some time chatting on "social crap" like Slashdot and Facebook.

I'm 27 by the way. I grew up watching technology advance too, I remember typing in code listings into my Commodore 128 when I was something like 6 years old. I love seeing the advances in technology. I also have friends around the 17-22 age bracket and they love gaming and technology too. Anyway, this conversation is all just speculation and anecdotes..

Re:its only the beginning

[vlm]

The report nicely avoids explaining it's methodology and likely uses a broad definition of games (Farmville and minesweeper anyone?)

Yes yes, everyone knows that only "REAL GAMES" are multiplayer endless remakes and sequels of first person shooters. Its a very tired old meme that should be allowed to expire.

Re:its only the beginning

[rohan972]

I enjoyed games as a child, didn't have much time for them for many years as an adult, now my kids have reached the age they like computer games. So now perhaps I'm a "gamer". I play console games with my kids regularly, the way my parents played board games or watched TV with me. I'm 39.

I think that games were seen as a kids thing not because of any intrinsic quality but that's they way they entered the market. Within 40 years computer/console games will be popular in retirement homes and will become something you do with your grandkids.

Re:its only the beginning

[SQLGuru]

There is a really simple explaination to this age (of which I'm a member....).

This group is pretty much the right age to have grown up with the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Apple II, and [insert your favorite classic computer here]. We transitioned to the Nintendo and Genesis when those became available.....and our ranks grew. We transitioned to the Super Nintendo and PS1......and our ranks grew. We transitioned to the Game Cube and the PS2 and the Xbox.....and our ranks grew. We transitioned to the Wii and the PS3 and the Xbox360.....and our ranks grew. Along came Move and Kinect.....and our ranks grew.

We've grown up understanding that it was an available form of entertainment. Some people were "late to the party" but they still understood that people their age played video games, even if they didn't. Eventually, they began playing as well.....and that transition was easy because it was already ingrained in their culture, even if not in their personal life.

Re:its only the beginning

[Seumas]

Unfortunately, we'll continue to be stuck playing videogames that are never developed with any "maturity" beyond the age of 16 and the industry and politicians treat it as something for five year olds that have to be nerfed.

Also, I haven't read this particular article (it's slashdot, afterall), but I'm sure that number takes into consideration all of the casual gamers, which throw the numbers of ENORMOUSLY, becuase then the average gamer is a post-menopausal female who plays angry birds and facebook games.

Re:its only the beginning

[bipedalhominid]

Multiplayer and FPS games aint going no wheres. It's too much fun shooting and vanquishing your enemies. Even if they are only AIs.

Re:its only the beginning

[bipedalhominid]

Yeah jealous cause they couldn't balance one Meg of RAM.

Re:its only the beginning

[slackbheep]

Sorry but playing Farmville or Bejeweled doesn't make you a gamer by any reasonable definition anymore than playing a little soccer with my nieces and nephews makes me an athlete. This is no different than the recent popularization of some facets of geek culture which leads to hipsters in box frames talking about how they're so glad they can come out about how they read The Hobbit at thirteen and once saw the inside of their old iMac.

Re:its only the beginning

[arth1]

Sorry but playing Farmville or Bejeweled doesn't make you a gamer by any reasonable definition anymore than playing a little soccer with my nieces and nephews makes me an athlete

First of all, you're ignoring whole genres of games here, which are more popular with the older crowd. Some because they can be played turn based (like the Civilization and Baldur's Gate series), and others for other reasons. I love flight simulators, and RPGs.
And as for Bejeweled, there are competitions for it, which is more than you can say about most of the games out there. Some people invest considerable amount of time and get extremely good at it. Yes, it's like "playing a little soccer" in that soccer is a sports. Just like being a world class frisbee player, yoyo pro or skateboarder. Even though everyone has one in the basement, and know the basics, that doesn't mean it's to be dismissed as irrelevant.

Your elitist crap and No Real Scotsman arguments doesn't hold water. If people play it, it's a game, even if you disdain it or dismiss it as too simple. That's a problem with you, not the games. Like someone else mentioned here, is Pong a game? If not, what was it people did when they spent time with Pong?
How about poker? Is it not a game because everybody knows how to play it, and Bridge and Gin Rummy are more complex?

Re:its only the beginning

[elrous0]

Your a grammar nazi.

Re:its only the beginning

[Kelbear]

There is a lower level of stigma, but it is still far from acceptable in my social circles and especially my workplace.

It's ok to mention that you have a game or two for the Wii or tried Kinect while visiting a friend.

It's not ok to expose yourself as someone who actively wastes their personal time on something like gaming.

Work filter blocks 3 categories, Porn, Gambling, and Gaming websites. Sports is acceptable however, and people are encouraged to follow it.

Re:its only the beginning

[Toonol]

The report nicely avoids explaining it's methodology and likely uses a broad definition of games (Farmville and minesweeper anyone?)

My God. It includes games in its definition of games? Obviously biased study.

Re:its only the beginning

[JustSomeProgrammer]

+1 Agree

The largest money making market in games is the farmville/casual games crowd. Yes historically serious games are much more expensive to develop and are more interesting when talking about them technically or strategically, but you cannot dismiss a game just because you don't like it or the category it belongs to. If someone spends 80 hours a week playing FPSs on Xbox 360 are they a gamer? What about someone spending 80 hours on WoW? What about someone spending 80 hours on Facebook games? Why would they *not* be a gamer?

Re:its only the beginning

[thynk]

*"You're a grammar Nazi" not "Your a grammar nazi"

I believe GP was correct with "it's methodology" being the methodology belonging to the report. I could be wrong, I often am.

Re:its only the beginning

[JustSomeProgrammer]

wow sucks to work where you do. I'm actually admired as a hardcore gamer at my workplace and people who aren't gamers give me respect for it. I think being ostracized for being a gamer at work would be a deal breaker for me.

Re:its only the beginning

[Quiet_Desperation]

My 52 year old sister is a gamer now, and not Farmville stuff. Fallout (3 & NV), Elder Scrolls (3, 4), Assassin's Creed (all), Gears Of War (1, 2), Mass Effect (all), Final Fantasy (7, 8, 9, 10, 10-2, 12, 13), Fable (1, 2, 3) and, well, you get the picture.

Although 7 years older than me, she was my she gaming padiwan for a while. A while back she said to me, "My godly sneak skill should have let me crit frag the raiders in the building, but they went all aggro." I was so proud. :)

Re:its only the beginning

[Quiet_Desperation]

I've seen some people start out with the casual games and get pulled into more complicated stuff. My sister's co-worker, a woman in her late 50s, started with some casual games, and last I saw she was playing Dragon Age II.

Re:its only the beginning

[Creepy]

You mean you're - a contraction of you are. Your is possessive. Yes, I am saying this to poke fun at the person above me ;)

Re:its only the beginning

[Lord Lode]

It's always means "it is", so unless the OP meant to say "The report nicely avoids explaining it is methodology ...", "it's" is wrong.

Re:its only the beginning

[JorgeFierro]

You are wrong. "It's" = "it is". ALWAYS.

Re:its only the beginning

[Creepy]

and you missed the Wii factor. I know people in their 70s playing Wii - in fact, mom (grandma) plays with my 3 year old nephew. He kicks her ass at most things, but they have a lot of fun. Most hardcore gamers look at the Wii with disdain, but there still is skill and strategy involved in the games.

Farmville I would call a strategy game, since there is some strategy to it (though it still baffles me why anyone plays it - it seems tedious). Bejeweled is a logic game. Is Tetris not a game? It also falls in the logic/puzzle solving category. Some people seem to define game = first person shooter, and that is a pretty narrow definition. I often get frustrated at FPS's especially since I have friends that can hit a pixel sized target with a sniper rifle and get a headshot every time. When I'm watching his screen, I often don't even see the target - it's absolutely amazing.

Re:its only the beginning

[Opportunist]

Not too much. Old gamers will die, young people will take their position. In the end, the average gamer will be at the average age in a given group of people, as it was with every other technology and pastime that got adopted by the young generation and they held onto as they aged.

A similar development can be observed in the P&PRPG market, I am fairly convinced that you see a very similar demographics in this game sector, the "technology" grew at pretty much the same time.

A reason why computer and P&P games didn't stop being interesting to their players and why they didn't "grow out" of it as they aged is, IMO, that the games matured with their players. Looking back at the 80s, neither computer nor P&P games were too sophisticated. On the computer game side you had twitch and shoot'em-up games, in the P&P sector mostly hack'n slash style RPG. Computer games evolved into story driven games with complex twists, as did P&P RPG settings. This kept their respective players interested as they, too, aged and matured.

Re:its only the beginning

[RavenLrD20k]

I'm not a grammar Nazi to others normally, but just as a clarification:

"it's" is ALWAYS a contraction for 'it is'
"its" is always possessive.

Re:its only the beginning

[anyGould]

Sorry but playing Farmville or Bejeweled doesn't make you a gamer by any reasonable definition anymore than playing a little soccer with my nieces and nephews makes me an athlete. This is no different than the recent popularization of some facets of geek culture which leads to hipsters in box frames talking about how they're so glad they can come out about how they read The Hobbit at thirteen and once saw the inside of their old iMac.

Why wouldn't Farmville count as a game? It's not a good game, but neither is Candyland or Monopoly.

We do ourselves a disservice when we try to draw that us/them line too close to ourselves. Shouldn't we be trying to draw them in rather than shut them out?

On the original topic, the average gamer age getting older should be filed with "water is wet". Let me know when the younger folks *stop* playing video games, and then we have a problem.

Re:its only the beginning

[i_b_don]

Farmville does not a gamer make.

d

Re:its only the beginning

[anyGould]

Same here, but that doesn't explain the massive boom in the overall number of people playing games. Gaming is now socially acceptable, even just 10-15 years ago you were viewed as a total nerd if you played games. That either means there's some other explanation for this trend or all those people who laughed at us for gaming were secretly jealous.

If I had to guess, it's that there's a newer generation of games that are a bit more accessible. My mother's not a "gamer", but she'll play Ticket to Ride, Zombie Dice, Wits & Wagers, Mario Party (and is absolutely mean at Mario Kart of any generation).

Casual gaming, DS/iPhone games... these are all good things - they let people try out the culture in smaller bites before we throw three hardcover books at them and say "build a character" :)

Re:its only the beginning

[Asmodae]

I think that's the most awesome thing I've heard all day.

Re:its only the beginning

[Reapy]

I think people call it social crap because the game bars you from advancing unless you spam the shit out of your friends to play the game also. I think that is the real thing, its like, if you like farmville, why are you not playing like blue harvest or animal crossing or something like that (no clue what farming/sim games are out there). Play a REAL game not one that tells you to spend $$ and or people's time before you can see the next .png image appear on your farm. More often then not, the people just don't know any better, that there are games out there you can just play without those types of barriers.

I know some puzzle gamer's that frighten me. I have a friend who showed me a panel de pon (something like that) video on youtube of him playing and the amount of hardcore gaming skills going on in it made my jaw drop, despite not knowing too much about the game.

But I really wouldn't call someone a gamer if they spend their time playing mafia wars and farmville on facebook. Also for reference I am 31.

Re:its only the beginning

[somersault]

Oh, I thought he was just talking about Facebook/Twitterin general. Those games are indeed just like chain mail and other pointless spam. I blocked them all long ago.

Re:its only the beginning

[tehcyder]

*"You're a grammar Nazi" not "Your a grammar nazi

*whoosh*

Re:its only the beginning

[slackbheep]

Heh, Rereading my comment I do come off as harsher than I intended. I do not dismiss casual games themselves, I simply believe that applying the tag of "Gamer" to someone who plays a little solitaire or liked that one Super Mario brothers game ten years ago is silly. That said, it was not my intention to sound as aggressive as I did, and I deserve the response I got.

Re:its only the beginning

[slackbheep]

To clarify I'm not arguing that Farmville and the like are not games, I simply meant that at least in my own experience "gamer" is a term that implies a certain level of interest or involvement beyond dabbling in this or that flash game on our coffee breaks. Regardless, it wasn't my intention to be a dickhead about it, and if I had been smart enough to proofread before posting I'd have caught and changed my tone. Far from being against casual games I'm happy for their existence, just like any other type game I can't sink my teeth into they are still pushing the industry forward and employing game developers.

This also means

[mozumder]

that younger people are less interested in games.

Re:This also means

[Tubal-Cain]

Or it just means that there are two gamer demographics: the college-and-below age, and the retired-and-bored age.

Re:This also means

[Fluffeh]

No, it just means that the same number of people playing games are a lot older than the average.

I don't know many kids these days that aren't playing consoles, a few of them seem to also play PC games as well.

Re:This also means

[BreezeC]

On the contrary,older people are interesting in games.
Older people also play games.

Stereotypes are true?

[Squiddie]

That being said, I hope these 40 year old gamers aren't still living in their's mother's basement. Seriously.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[superwiz]

This is the generation that came of age in the 90's. Most of them made more money than their parents on their first job out of college. They were what all the millenials think they ought to be. And having created the Internet, made or lost even more money in the housing boom, they are now going Galt by playing video games.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[Anonymous Coward]

Myself and my firends range in Age from 37 to 47 and we are all active gamers. Though I don't think any of us have lived in our parents basement since we were 16 or 17. seriously though until recent years I never new many mature people that lived with their parents, nowadays though I know plenty of 18-25 year olds that are perfectly happy to stay at home (much to their parents disgust). Not sure if parents are simply to easy on kids nowadays or if they are just lazier.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[gregrah]

Saving money is another good reason. In other countries (I'm thinking of Japan, for example) it is perfectly acceptable for a person to live with their parents until the day they get married. That way, they have a nice nest egg saved up for after they get married.

Having blown tens of thousands of dollars on rent when I was single - that actually seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[mcvos]

You can't put a price to adulthood, if you ask me. Not to mention the freedom for both parties involved. (Also, my rent was pretty low.)

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[rtb61]

What are you some kind of racist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo_women. There you go a matriarchal society where all the males remain with the mothers, aunts, sisters and nieces through out their lives. Zero divorce and no child support.

Hmm, are you a slave to your relationship, just jealousy force you to slander other lifestyles and, does the shame and humiliation of your extended bathroom visits haunt you.

Big thing when it comes to gaming design for older generations "BIGGER FONTS" at high resolution settings or at the very least separately adjustable fonts in the graphics options.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[Ash Vince]

That being said, I hope these 40 year old gamers aren't still living in their's mother's basement. Seriously.

You obviously still far too young to realise what you said is quite offensive to many people. I am 37 years old, not 40 you insensitive clod. NEVER round ages up.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[TheRaven64]

House sharing works almost as well for that. Until about a year or so after I finished my PhD, I was sharing a flat with a few friends. The rent was very low, and I saved up enough to put down almost a 50% deposit on my first house, and I'm paying about as much in mortgage payments as I was on rent when I was sharing a house with two other people.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[russasaurous]

Hah! That is a prescient set of observations there supahwiz - including your sig line.... Although a number of us are avoiding Galt syndrome by trying to whip the millennials into shape - 9th place trophies & all.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[stdarg]

Houses in other countries are often designed for multi-generational living. My grandparents' house in Germany had 3 floors, each completely independent. Point being, when people from other countries say "kids should live at home until they're married" it's not like here. You would be doing your own cooking, cleaning, laundry, paying utility bills, etc. When you get guests, or your girlfriend stays over, your dad isn't hovering in the next room.

It's not complete independence, but it's closer than the stereotype of living with your parents here in the US suggests.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[Matt.Battey]

So if they are going to market to us GenXrs then that would be a first. Madison Avenue has never wanted to target us, instead focusing on the Boomers and now the Y/Millennials (think Jersey Shore). Going Galt is as much more than just a gaming thing, it's all about finding your own culture, when the mainstream ignores you. The left coast is starting to get it, but the other half of the entertainment industry is still stuck in 1968.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[drsquare]

Actually I'm pretty sure that's par for the course everywhere in the world outside of the US. It's the exception, not the rule, that parents kick their kids out of the house as soon as legally allowed, leaving them drowing in bills and rents before they've even finished school, never mind managed to get a well-paying job.

This was only really possible thanks to America's cheap land that enabled surburban expansion whereby anyone even on minimum wage could afford a cheap house, and the productive economy that enabled everyone to get a job.

Now that economic reality is setting in, America's advantages being eroded, and the debt which supported this unsustainable lifestyle reaching its limits, they might have to accept living in the parents basement like the rest of the world.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Big thing when it comes to gaming design for older generations "BIGGER FONTS" at high resolution settings or at the very least separately adjustable fonts in the graphics options.

My 45 year old eyes went with a better solution: bigger TV. :-)

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[Creepy]

Nah - we've got our own basements to live in, but mom lives upstairs sometimes (ok, the classmate I know is technically in an over/under duplex with mom upstairs, but close enough ;). I could have mom upstairs if I wanted and live in my basement (I have a mother-in-law apartment down there, aka the party kitchen), but she and dad have their own house.

My generation is the first to grow up with video games. The 2600 is probably the most popular console of the generation (circa 1977), but Pong was popular before that. Some of us (and yes, that means me) were exposed to video games from early childhood - my uncle (an electrician who wrote all electronics off as a business expense to learn how to service them) and cousin (his dad was a rich estate lawyer, so he had everything) had Magnavox Odyssey consoles (my cousin also had the Odyssey TV with built in games and later an Odyssey^2).

  Still, I think most of my generation was not really exposed like I was - my wife and her family (3 sisters), for instance, didn't really play games until the Wii came out. I think the Wii really skewed the numbers - if you discount that, most gamers are probably Gen Y (the Nintendo generation).

    Speaking of Gen X, and quoting the Replacements in Bastards of Young - "Ya got no war to name us." I always liked that - we're called Gen X because the US wasn't in a major war for the first time in a century (every generation has its war - ...the Spanish American War, Great War (WW1), World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, X, Y [Afghanistan/Iraq], ...).

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[mcvos]

Few families have houses that large, however (varying per region and country, I'm sure). My parents actually lived with my dad's parents for a short period after they married (which I don't think they did before they married, but I'll ask), where they did have access to their own tiny kitchen. However, the vast majority of houses don't have a second kitchen or bathroom or anything like that.

My grandparents were fortunate enough to have a big house (they weren't rich, but houses just weren't as expensive back then, apparently), but when I moved out, my parents (who had quite a bit more comfortable wealth) had a house that really only fitted a single family, with little room for any kind of independence. Once I moved out, they moved to a house with a larger living room and less/smaller bedrooms. My sister kept living with them for quite long time (until she was 22 I think), but that got increasingly uncomfortable, with loud arguments and all that. At some point it's just time to move out, or you end up like Howard Wollowitz.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[StikyPad]

Yeah, except many parents aren't kicking their kids out; rather most kids want to move out ASAP, either for freedom, status, or both. There's a rather large stigma attached to living with parents in the US, else the "his mom's basement" jokes wouldn't really be funny. The fact that this is common only in the US is more a reflection of the fact that it's really only been *possible* in the US. Of course this may be changing with the current economy.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[iamhassi]

Created the internet? I'm sorry, but the Internet has been popular for over 20 years, when these 37 yr olds were still teenage kids. None of them "created" the Internet. They might have made some of the more popular websites that came out late 90s like google, amazon, paypal, etc, but they did not create the Internet. It was there, they just made it more useful.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[thetoadwarrior]

Looking at how maturity levels amongst gamers seem to be dropping then all signs point to the fact they are indeed in mommy's basement.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[Squiddie]

It was just a joke, but living in your mom's basement is still pretty crap, at least in the west.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[Cederic]

Reality is, old man, we made the Web. And we're proud of it.

You can thank us later. Right now we're too busy conquering Japan. Again. Bloody sequels..

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[snuf23]

Prior to the first commercial ISPs the Internet wasn't available to the general public. Military, government, educational organizations yes, Joe public, no. My first exposure to the Internet was through Usenet via UUCP dumps to personal BBS systems. It wasn't until I got a university account that I had access to the Internet proper.

The first commercial ISPs came in the early 90s with the rise of the web and HTTP. You are right in saying that the Internet was around, but the commercial Internet was not. If you were in your early 20s in the early 90s and could spell the word "computer" odds are you worked at some company associated to the early Internet boom. I know I did. I know all my friends did. Whether it was at ISPs or infrastructure or at companies that build on top of it such as Yahoo and Google.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[sg_oneill]

I wonder how wide the curve is to say its all Gen-X's

I mean, my *grandmother* likes to sit on her computer and whack away at puzzle games and if she's feeling naughty, she'll play the space invaders clone that she insisted I put on there (She's been playing space invaders since the 80s).

She's nearly 90. Granted she spends most of her time now on skype pestering the grandkids.

God help us if she ever discovers online gaming. We'll never hear the end of her.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[tehcyder]

I just had to look up what "going Galt" means, and wish I hadn't bothered. Why do you people keep giving publicity and credence to Ayn fucking Rand?

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[tehcyder]

Saving money is another good reason. In other countries (I'm thinking of Japan, for example) it is perfectly acceptable for a person to live with their parents until the day they get married. That way, they have a nice nest egg saved up for after they get married. Having blown tens of thousands of dollars on rent when I was single - that actually seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Different countries, different customs. In countries like the US and UK young adults are traditionally more independent.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[tehcyder]

House sharing works almost as well for that. Until about a year or so after I finished my PhD, I was sharing a flat with a few friends. The rent was very low, and I saved up enough to put down almost a 50% deposit on my first house, and I'm paying about as much in mortgage payments as I was on rent when I was sharing a house with two other people.

How cheap are houses where you live? In the UK, a 50% deposit on the average priced house would be GBP 100,000, which I can't see many students (or normal paid workers) saving up for.

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[TheRaven64]

The UK average includes London, where house prices are insane. For what I paid for a nice place with a sea view in Swansea, I'd just about get a run-down bedsit in London. £200K here would buy a detached house with a decent garden and about four times as much space as I need (my current place is bigger than I need, and was about half that). Decent internet infrastructure means that I can live here and work for companies all around the world, enjoying a very relaxed lifestyle and low cost of living, but charging the same rates that someone in London or Silicon Valley would charge...

Re:Stereotypes are true?

[luke923]

I wouldn't say that Madison Avenue wanted to target us, but it's just they didn't know how. The Baby Boomers/Millenials/Tween Wavers like to be pandered to -- we Xers are more likely to treat those advertising suits a bit more suspect.

Middle age and I hate games

[codepunk]

I absolutely detest playing games, programming them on the other hand, that I love.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Berkyjay]

Sorry

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Anonymous Coward]

I absolutely detest playing games, programming them on the other hand, that I love.

On the bright side you have a nice lawn and Matlock reruns.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Max Romantschuk]

I absolutely detest playing games, programming them on the other hand, that I love.

I love to program, but after doing it all day at work I quite enjoy a diversion in the form of games. Mostly it's with the kids and not very deep titles, but definitely helps to unwind.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Grygus]

I have heard it suggested a few times that this is true of all game designers, that when a real designer plays a game, all he sees are the design decisions; the game itself can't be seen behind the mechanics, and that a good game for a designer is a well-designed game, which is not necessarily related to having fun with the gameplay. Richard Bartle once wrote an interesting blog entry about a zone's design in World of Warcraft; he definitely doesn't see and play the game like most people.

I am glad people like you exist, because that's why I have games. I think you're really missing out sometimes, though.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[DarwinSurvivor]

Darn, that's too bad. I just found this really cool game. You start with an empty text file and the goal is to combine keywords and codes in order to create a procedural algorithm that produces an environment containing further goals for others to complete.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Jaruzel]

Cheers for the Bartle link - not an article I've read before. +1 virtual mod point for you.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Jaruzel]

I'm like this, although not as extreme. I get bored with playing games quite easily. The number of games I've actually completed in my life can be counted on one hand. On the flip side, I have a source code folder chocka-block with half finished game concepts, and I'm always dreaming up new game ideas I'd like to implement...

-Jar

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[ledow]

When I turned 30, I've finally bothered to sit down and seriously try to write the game I've been planning ever since about a year after I got my ZX Spectrum.

Before now, I've started it in BASIC, Z80 assembler, Visual BASIC, x86 assembler, Java and C++, (in roughly that order) and a ton of other languages in order to learn the language, and never got to where I felt it was coming together. A year or so ago I sat down with another project, ported it to an ARM embedded device using C without much hassle at all (I already knew the language much better than I thought), and in the process set myself up a complete cross-platform development environment that was invisible to me.

Once there, I decided to start the ancient project of mine again to see if I could and got further than ever before (you know you program too much and remember too much of your computer science courses from 10 years ago when you can knock up a D* pathfinding algorithm with multiple zones and movement prediction quicker than you can find one on the Internet).

Now I have an Eclipse window running on my computer at all times (literally), plugged into a remote SVN server on a remote dedicated server that I bought for that purpose alone, with Cygwin and (later) MinGW integrated and a remote Linux headless build on the dedicated server that "shows" its screen to a VNC client on my PC (which gives me Windows and Linux, 32- and 64-bit, GPU-accelerated (high GPU bandwidth) and unaccelerated (with low VNC "video bus" bandwidth), responsive and latent clients, at least three different versions of gcc to test-compile on etc. in one fell swoop) and several 10's of 1000's of lines of code that I've wrote from scratch.

Gaming when you're young just makes you want to be a gamer and make your own games when you're older, in my experience. I bet most games industry workers are OLDER than the supposed demographic of the games they write - in which case you have to ask why they wouldn't make the games fun for themselves too - after all, they play them more than ANYONE else and they become an immutable part of their lives.

I haven't played a single game in the last 15 years where I didn't try to work out how they got it to work how it did ,and some of them (especially the smaller indie titles) I have actually recreated in my own tests - just without the pretty graphics. I just bought Dungeon Keeper on GoG.com - unaccelerated 486-era computers running a fully-rotatable 3D environment. Admittedly low res, but damn I was never expecting that to work in DOSBox - and then I remembered Magic Carpet and other similar games and realised that even back then how the games worked was just as interesting to me as how they played.

And yet, I still pour hundreds of hours into silly indie games that are nothing more than pre-rendered sprites on a 2D background with very primitive physics. Altitude has sucked my life away, for instance.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[aaaaaaargh!]

I like both.

However, as a gamer falling into the middle age category as well I can understand your hatred for games to some extent. Although I'm still spending quite some time on gaming, I'm buying less and less games because games have become more and more stupid. I've been wondering for a long time why studios and producers don't make games that are more suitable for halfway mature people. With almost no exceptions the marketing and the content still seem to be devised for really stupid 14-15 year old boys living on the countryside in the US and being extreme patriots. Somehow I doubt this profile matches the profile of the people like me who actually buy games.

It has come to a point where you need to make considerable efforts to just being able tolerate the main story. Take for example BFBC 2, which I have played recently. The game mechanics was okay but the background story really felt like an insult. Even 15 year old boys are rarely stupid enough to appreciate such a plot.

Also, if there were an MMORPG or even just an online shooter were you can only get an account after having proved that you're above 30, I'd probably spent more than 0 hours a week online. Not that I have much time anyway...

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[ledow]

By a strange coincidence, TH is one of the inspirations for my game (though my idea has nothing to do with hospitals or theme parks, and will hopefully be a bit more "grown-up" - TH was rather Fisher-Price in terms of gameplay, graphics and humour).

Aw, if only Bullfrog were still around in their original form...

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[ildon]

I don't know about other people, but I can definitely parse out and separate good design decisions from fun gameplay. An easy example is World of Warcraft. It's chock full of good design decisions that somehow still fail to be "fun" (although I do still find raiding fun, primarily for the social aspect and the personal achievement aspects, there are tons of leveling, pvp, and class balance issues where brilliant design decisions have been made to solve a problem but where the brilliant design decision either still related in an unfun situation or actually removed some aspect that was previously really fun).

This is actually part of why I don't really like Half-life 2. It's extremely well designed, but playing it just feels like a chore. I can see all the little puzzles trying to teach players how to play the game without a tutorial. I can see all the introducing of boss mechanics and monster behaviors before having you face them. I can see the meticulously placed ammo and health pickups, which basically act like quick save points between the sort of "action theater" sections. But when it comes down to it, I just enjoy the arcade-y Doom/Quake style of FPS, where you handle monster patterns by dodging projectiles and not by hiding behind cover and sniping/throwing grenades, and where the player runs 900 mph on foot, and the solution to every puzzle is just a blue key or big switch away. Objectively, Half-life 2 is brilliant, almost a case study in game design. Subjectively, I'd never play through it more than once (basically just to see the story). I'm secretly hoping DNF's gameplay hearkens back to this older gameplay style, but I'm not that confident.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[DNS-and-BIND]

The same concept explains why serious movie fans have such wildly different impressions of movies than the rest of us. We're watching the movie, and they're watching the director move the camera around.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Hatta]

a good game for a designer is a well-designed game, which is not necessarily related to having fun with the gameplay.

If the gameplay isn't fun, the design isn't good.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[elrous0]

Yeah well, until I can kill dragons in real life, I'll have to be content with videogames. And I'm also pretty sure I'll never get to join a REAL special ops unit.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[elrous0]

Now I have an Eclipse window running on my computer at all times (literally), plugged into a remote SVN server on a remote dedicated server that I bought for that purpose alone, with Cygwin and (later) MinGW integrated and a remote Linux headless build on the dedicated server that "shows" its screen to a VNC client on my PC (which gives me Windows and Linux, 32- and 64-bit, GPU-accelerated (high GPU bandwidth) and unaccelerated (with low VNC "video bus" bandwidth), responsive and latent clients, at least three different versions of gcc to test-compile on etc. in one fell swoop) and several 10's of 1000's of lines of code that I've wrote from scratch.

My cat's name is Mittens.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[dcollins]

Personally, as both a game player, and a former video game designer and programmer, I think that attitude is the kiss of death. I've had co-workers at video game shops say, "You know what would be fun to program? Databases! Or anything, really." I totally couldn't wrap my head around this. And the resulting "games" were pretty stale crap. Just fulfilling a contract, really.

Historically, I feel like that's the attitude that killed the tabletop RPG industry's heyday in the 1980's. You need some love for the art-form you're creating or the whole endeavor is grasping bullshit. Top movie directors will go on about the movies they love and that inspired them, they don't express contempt for the art-form.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Machtyn]

Get Serious Sam and its sequels.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[spire3661]

Im sorry but BFBC2 had a decent story and really decent dialog/banter. It was a funny, not so serious game in the single player. It was refreshing versus always playing Uber Elite Tier One Operator Bullet Mcbiggun #7.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Kashgarinn]

Completely agree, his example of STV is quite accurate as conforming well to a certain game design, but being horribly boring place for a normal person.

You will never condition a person to like doing "kill X Y times" especially not as many times as nesingwary missions. The only reason a person does it is because of some other gain, it'll never be because of enjoyment. Killing something once, that has uniqueness and interest, killing something which spawns again after a couple of minutes has no enjoyment, especially when it's more than 3.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[enderjsv]

I hate this argument. There's plenty of mature games out there. Portal 2, Mass Effect, Bioshock. These are just three games off the top of my head that are definitely at a level of maturity with complex themes and sophisticated story-lines. Your post reeks of pseudo-elitism.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[ildon]

I wasn't implying Quake was a bad game or poorly designed game at all. Just expressing my own personal preference.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[Colonel Korn]

Completely agree, his example of STV is quite accurate as conforming well to a certain game design, but being horribly boring place for a normal person.

You will never condition a person to like doing "kill X Y times" especially not as many times as nesingwary missions. The only reason a person does it is because of some other gain, it'll never be because of enjoyment. Killing something once, that has uniqueness and interest, killing something which spawns again after a couple of minutes has no enjoyment, especially when it's more than 3.

In my experience, STV has historically been where a large fraction of players abandon characters as they move from entertaining early zones to dreary, repetitive higher level zones without as clear or compelling as a narrative. That doesn't detract from Bartle's blog post, but it does point out that what may be interesting for a developer is quite the opposite for the player. But speaking of the post, I've rarely graded an essay so poorly thought out - it's a perfect example of forcing reality to conform to a metaphor and losing track of reality itself in the process.

Re:Middle age and I hate games

[KingBenny]

yea, i thought bad company 2 was hilarious really, made me lol more than a few times, even the second time i did the campaign, the way those guys were bickering all the time, the pacifist chopper pilot, i think the characters had depth

Serious?

[devphaeton]

I turn 37 this year. I figured I was written off as "completely irrelevant" as a gamer, a hacker, a consumer, as.... anything.... probably more than a decade ago.

37 is an awkward age to be.

Re:Serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll get over it in less than a year.

Re:Serious?

[Daetrin]

Depends on who you ask? It seems the average age of tv viewers hit 50 fairly recently, but that's not the demographic that advertisers like to aim for so that's not the primary age most shows get written for. The average age of movie viewers seems a lot harder to pin down, though a lot of studies state that it's lower than the tv viewer average, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same thing is true in that case to a lesser degree as well.

I don't know if the advertisers and producers have good evidence to indicate the younger demographics respond better to advertising or if they're just prejudiced towards younger viewers for some reason, but whatever the case older tv viewers are relatively irrelevant as far as the production of tv (and possibly movie) media is concerned.

And then look at all the studies showing how large the population of female gamers is, and consider how well the gaming industry has responded in that case...

Re:Serious?

[Grygus]

I would imagine that chasing younger viewers has something to do with the fact that they are potentially customers for a longer span of time.

Re:Serious?

[scumdamn]

Next year for me. I'm below average...

Re:Serious?

[MemoryDragon]

You are not written off as a dad :-)

Re:Serious?

[Eivind]

There's rock-solid evidence that younger people are more influenced by advertising. Thus the primary target is old-enough-to-have-money but at the same time young-enough-to-be-influencable. To a certain degree younger children influence the purchases of their parents offcourse, so those too get targeted.

Thing is, most habits are pretty well-formed before you're 40, and odds are you'll stick with many of them for life. Sure you'll drop -some- old stuff, and pick up -some- new stuff. But at a rate nowhere near that of the younger generation which doesn't yet *have* a developed mature taste.

Consider how music-taste changes 10-25 versus 30-45. The first is a huge change, and probably most of the music-styles and/or artists that'll be your favourites for life, you learn to know in this age, the second age-span ? Not so much. You'll maybe get to know a few new artists, mostly such as play in genres you already know and like.

But odds are, most of the music you love at 30, you'll still enjoy at 45. Same goes for food, for vacations, for cars, for clothing, for *most* stuff you buy, infact.

Re:Serious?

[vlm]

Consider how music-taste changes 10-25 versus 30-45. The first is a huge change, and probably most of the music-styles and/or artists that'll be your favourites for life, you learn to know in this age, the second age-span ? Not so much. You'll maybe get to know a few new artists, mostly such as play in genres you already know and like.

Having been there done that, I can assure you for the vast majority of people, its not some organic brain malfunction, but more like:

10-25 = I love whatever the music industry execs are pushing today. Whatever is on the top 40 station, is what all my friends will listen to, so I will too. And I, and all my friends, will wisely all rebel against "the man" in perfect conformity with each other and the music industry execs.

30-45 = F those music company execs and the trash they push. I'm not going to listen to their formulaic repetitive junk. I have better things to do than play-time pretend rebellion. There's a giant sea of junk created every year and I'm sure that 1 in 1000 new tracks are worth listening to, but I don't have the time or motivation to do so.

Re:Serious?

[Aceticon]

37? Awkward?

Nah!

It's a prime age my friend.

Nah

[eln]

We're all still mentally 15, so targeting us with boobs and explosions is still cool.

Re:Nah

[c0lo]

We're all still mentally 15, so targeting us with boobs and explosions is still cool.

Yeah... those were good times... no goatse, I mean.

Re:Nah

[Sponge Bath]

...boobs and explosions

You just described the entire plot of Heavy Metal. Good times.

Re:Nah

[Jedi Alec]

My usual statement is "I'm a guy. I like stuff that goes vroom or boom. Bonus points if it does both".

Note that boobs go neither boom nor vroom, but contrary to hypercars or explosives I get to handle those in real life without significant danger to the people within a 2 mile radius ;-)

Re:Nah

[The Moof]

Which brings up another fact from those statistics - the number of women gamers is rising (58/42 split now). I fear our boob-filled explosive journeys may be in danger.

Re:Nah

[Abstrackt]

I have to say though, that I'm pretty ambivalent on exploding boobs.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just follow the link to the story to find out how they came up with that figure? It's... right... huh.

Dammit, I've been Soulskilled!

(Thankfully /. 2.0 links to the original submission, and you can get the link from there: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20069682-17/a-childs-hobby-average-gamer-is-37-years-old/)

Anyway, reading that story, you're probably right, because it turns out the study is by an industry group trying to prove that kids don't play violent video games. They're not exactly what I'd call impartial.

Anyway, since CNet is useless, here's the link to the original study: http://www.theesa.com/newsroom/release_detail.asp?releaseID=147

Who has time to play?

[DigiShaman]

In this market, you're either unemployed (and looking), or overworked doing the workload of potentially three employees at 60+ hours/week (companies cutting costs). From my view, there' no middle ground between work and play. So at 34 years old, gaming is a legendary form of recreation I simply don't have the time for.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Nursie]

You're doing it wrong?

Seriously... I don't think I could survive more than a couple of 60 hour weeks in a row, and neither would I want to. if that realyl is the situation where you are then I suggest you might want to look into other lines of work.

Re:Who has time to play?

[mcvos]

I work 32 hours a week, but I'm still swamped with the care for my kid and other commitments. I still manage to find some time for the occasional game (currently playing The Witcher 2), as well as two table-top RPG groups (one bi-weekly, one monthly). The gaming does put some stress on my schedule, though.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Ironhandx]

60 hour weeks too stressful for more than a couple of weeks in a row??

I've been working 60+ hour weeks for several years now. You know what I was working before that? 80+ hour weeks. interspersed with 90 and 100+ hour weeks.

I'm just wondering how old you are... A lot of the 40+ generation seems to think everything started going down hill with the generation born in the 80's. If you're under 30 then you and another person I met recently may be confirming the stereotype >_

Re:Who has time to play?

[f()rK()_Bomb]

I hope your joking and didn't waste your whole life working. it's not even legal here to work those kinds of hours, it's well known to be detrimental to performance.

Re:Who has time to play?

[bipedalhominid]

I agree, regularly working that much has to cut way into your beer drinking and pool shooing time.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Ironhandx]

I personally am aware that its detrimental to performance. However sometimes you've gotta do what you've gotta do.

When your normal performance requires a lot of thought but then you really need some stuff moved in the warehouse and theres no one to do it, you do your regular job and then do that job too.

Also its not legal here for a company to force an employee to work those kinds of hours. However where I come from theres this thing called responsibility and dedication that cause a lot of folks to end up doing those sorts of hours from time to time, not usually to the extent that I have however.

Also I have no idea what you're talking about this "wasting" crap. I'm in my mid-twenties and in a few months I'll have a net worth of over $500,000. By the time I'm 35 I'll be able to very comfortably retire.

I certainly hope you're joking and you aren't planning on wasting your whole life working 40 hours a week until you're 60.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Nursie]

Then you're crazy, IMHO.

I work a little under 40 hours a week. I have worked 60+ during times of exceptional need and I think three weeks of that is my current record. But I will never accept that as a normal working week.

If you're being asked to go into emergency mode more than a couple of times a year then your managers are getting things badly wrong. If you're being asked to do 60+ constantly, and agree to, then (IMHO) your priorities in life are all screwed up.

I was born late 70s, so I'm in my 30s. I don't live in the US though, I now live in Australia and previously lived in Europe. Neither place seems to go in for corporate slavery quite as much, praise be.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Nursie]

Now there's a man who has his priorities sorted out!

Re:Who has time to play?

[Totenglocke]

but I'm still swamped with the care for my kid

And that is merely #1 on my list of a thousand reasons to never have kids. I spent enough time growing up being miserable because I had no free time - I'm not going to be foolish enough to do that to myself for 20-30 years now that I'm older.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Ironhandx]

I volunteered myself for those hours. In some cases the bosses don't even know how long I worked. The up side for me is that I get results. Thats seen and valued more than anything else, especially given the current economic climate.

I'm Canadian by the way, and I'll probably be semi-retired by the time I'm your age.

I think you're crazy that you'll settle for doing less than your absolute best and then being able to enjoy the spoils of your hard effort for a long time afterwards.

Re:Who has time to play?

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Ok, it sounds like you own your own company or something similar then, which is very different to working imo. You made it sound like your happily slaving away hours for someone else, rather than basically time shifting hours now for future hours :) The discussion was clearly aimed more towards the kind of people who are getting forced into those kinds of hours with no hopes of investing it into early retirement.

Re:Who has time to play?

[AtlantaSteve]

I agree that 60 hours of WORK per week is probably hyperbole... but the spirit rings true. When I was in my 20's, all I had was work and leisure. Period. As I shifted into my 30's, I now have wife and family. I'm active in church, and a couple of civic organizations. I have more home maintenance chores, because I now own rather than rent. I started learning a musical instrument, because when you get older you want to tackle some of those "one of these days..." life goals. Etc.

So, yeah... I may work just a hair over 40 hours a week, but I feel like I have 80-100 hours per week of stuff going on. Life's just different from what it was in my 20's.

Re:Who has time to play?

[drsquare]

If everyone worked 60 hours a week instead of 40, they'd simply eliminate one third of the work-force. Good luck retiring when you've never had a job. Or selling any products when no-one can afford them because they don't have job.

Don't expect to get paid any more either, with more people fighting for the same jobs that means lower wages. You do realise that your vast income is the exception, not the rule, and down to fortune rather than you being some sort of super worker? In millions of companies across the world, people are working as hard as you for as many hours and being paid fuck all whilst the bosses run away with all the cash.

Hell, it'd only take a change of ownership or management before someone wonders why they're paying you so much money when there are so many experienced, qualified people unemployed and willing to do the same work for a fraction of your salary.

Don't be so confident about your retirement either. With your mentality leading to mass unemployment and stagnant incomes, the consumer economy will collapse and your shares will be worthless.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Unkyjar]

Thank you for doing your bit towards helping this world with its population problem.

Re:Who has time to play?

[DigiShaman]

No, it's not hyperbole.

You see, from 8 - 5, I work on reactive admin support. From 5 to 9, it's pro-active maintenance, planning, and documentation. Seriously, I'm overworked. I know this, but this market sucks balls!!!

Re:Who has time to play?

[Ironhandx]

Who said I had shares in anything? A lot of the work I do now is purely for myself, and I only deal in tangible assets, not figments of speculators imaginations, which is most of what the stock market is.

Previously the work has been in situations, not where we didn't want to pay someone to do it, but there simply was no one that we could get TO do it. These are the places where the opportunities are. They exist in every company from time to time. I am pretty damn good at changing hats, which was why I ended up with those sorts of hours.

Now its a situation where 60+ hours is simply required for the job. No one else has the required combination of knowledge, experience and ability to do it. At least not without hiring an entire other person for about the same salary(a large expense) for 40 hours a week to cover of just an extra 20, plus probably not end up with as good a job done due to the nature of it.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Ironhandx]

Well, largely I am working for someone else, I'm just working for them doing something in the same lines of what I'm investing in myself. It all sort of comes together and works magnificently.

My main point is that complaining about working 60 hours or so sometimes doesn't get you ahead in life. I was slaving working for 80+ hours for someone else. The thing is I got more money to invest in something to pull myself out of having to work for someone else.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Ironhandx]

I jump on slashdot to cool the old brain cells every now and then during the day, I'll only post during lunch or a quick break though.

Since I'm the boss however I decide when those breaks are :)

Also: Not self employed. At least not entirely.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Nursie]

"I think you're crazy that you'll settle for doing less than your absolute best and then being able to enjoy the spoils of your hard effort for a long time afterwards."

I'm enjoying them now.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Nursie]

So what is it you do that will allow you to retire at 35 and has you worth that much in your 20s?

Because working for someone else (which is what we were talking about, I guess) will never get you there, unless you also live like a pauper. Hell, I could do more/longer of what I do now and it would make no difference, at all.

You and I most likely have very different priorities in life either way, but I'm interested in the anser if only because I genuinely have no idea how you could do that.

Re:Who has time to play?

[Ironhandx]

Construction actually.

Someone that can actually deal with the hectic schedule of project management, and get things done on budget and on schedule is a very rare commodity. I get to charge a premium because of it. I also get very good rates on labour, electrical, everything for my own buildings due to the fact that I'm also hiring these same guys for work for someone else, so I get to take advantage of the same rates. My investments are tangible and secure, and the way I build the market can depreciate by about 30% inside a few months and I'll still get out fine. Actually the way they're set up I can easily ride out a 2-3 year market slump should I choose to do so.

My priority is to do this and get it out of the way so that I can have a large family and mostly just do some investment and building part time while they're growing up. I'm a very... driven individual.

The current economic problems have actually created an increased demand for people with my skills, not a lesser one. Its very interesting how its all playing out inside the construction industry.

What defines a gamer

[Freaky Spook]

My dad is almost 60 and he will play Worms Armageddon with me on the X360 sometimes when he comes to visit. Does this mean he is a gamer?

I've always thought, there are people who play games, just like there are people who go to the movies, but just the act of doing that doesn't make them "Movie Buffs" or "Gamers"

Re:What defines a gamer

[drinkypoo]

I've always thought, there are people who play games, just like there are people who go to the movies, but just the act of doing that doesn't make them "Movie Buffs" or "Gamers"

The act of going to a movie makes one a moviegoer, and the act of playing a game ("gaming") makes one a gamer. HTH, HAND.

Re:What defines a gamer

[ildon]

Exactly. Where's the link for this article? Are all the housewives and secretaries playing Farmville "gamers"?

Re:What defines a gamer

[Abstrackt]

For what it's worth, I think it's awesome your dad plays games with you; my father will barely sit in the same room as a computer. In my opinion, a gamer is someone who considers games a hobby or a passion; that covers your tabletop gamers, casual gamers, hardcore gamers and so on.

Re:What defines a gamer

[Kelbear]

I like your distinction, it sums things up quite nicely.

From now on, I'll call anyone who has played any kind of electronic entertainment "gamers", and anyone who is actively engaged in gaming, and digesting related news "gaming enthusiasts".

If there are "casual" gamers who are "hardcore" about their games, they'd certainly belong in the category of gaming enthusiasts. However, the vast majority who only dabble in gaming as a way of passing time, wouldn't fall into the category.

Gaming enthusiast as a term would provides a meaningful distinction for the purpose of communication, while avoiding the perjorative associations linked to the more commonly used terms of "casual" and "hardcore".

Re:What defines a gamer

[Machtyn]

I would consider myself a gamer. But I also spend over 10 hours a week playing games. I would say that anyone who spends a few hours a week, or 5+ hours a month would be considered a gamer.

As a counter-point, I would not consider myself a movie-goer or TV-viewer. I attend a movie at a theater twice a year (maybe three). I watch less than 5 hours of TV a week (and usually don't watch the full show).

Re:What defines a gamer

[ildon]

Playing games does not make one a "gamer". Watching the Twilight series may make one a movie-goer but does it make them a movie buff?

not true

[slashmydots]

That is absolutely and utterly not true. Think about what kind of numbers it would take to get an average that high and compare it to reality of what demographics are known to play games and you won't even need to read the article to know it's BS. Also, at the time of this posting, you can't read the article because this story doesn't link to one. Is it April Fools day already?
Yes, I play Dungeons and Dragons Online and most people are 20-40 and it's great because kids get really annoying in games (I'm 23 btw) but since practically every teenager plays video games, they would drive the actual calculated average to around 20 at the highest, not 37. 37 year old gamers exist, they're just not the average.

Re:not true

[wind_ice_flames]

Hmm. Well, I would like to believe you, but I couldn't find your data anywhere. Oh wait that is because you don't have any. All you have is your own experience with gaming. People tend to associate with others with like interests and (age ranges). So basically your personal experience may seem like most gamers are younger, but you are only comparing it your frame of reference. While I do not completely believe this report because they do not show how they collected the data I believe yours less. At least they had something to show other than stories.

Re:not true

[Xest]

Have you ever stopped to think that you perceive there to be more youngsters in games because they're the ones screaming down the headset on XBox live to you and spamming like the children they are on chat channels in WoW and so forth, whilst the older ones who are a bit more mature quietly just keep to enjoying themselves?

It's likely also that teenagers spend more time in games simply because they have more spare time, which may also give the perception that they're more common, but this is about numbers of gamers in certain age groups rather than gaming time per age group.

Re:not true

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know the ages of most of the people you interact with on-line, and I'll bet the ones you hear the ages of the least are those you'd think of as "too old". I doubt any of the hundreds of people I interact with know that I'm 55, and that if they're younger than the average age in this study, I've been on-line longer than they've been alive.

Re:not true

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I completely agree. Assuming any kind of balanced average, the result implied that there are is a comparable number of 59 year olds playing video games as there are 15 year olds. This is not a credible statistic.

Re:not true

[ildon]

My WoW guild actively avoids recruiting people under 18 (most of our players are 25-40 and married with children), and I'd say about 9/10 of our applicants are 14-22.

Re:not true

[blueg3]

Have you ever stopped to think that someone has probably actually measured the age distribution of Xbox gamers?

The answer is that 44% are under 18, and another 26% are 18-24.

Re:not true

[blueg3]

The age distribution isn't particularly balanced, but you can find measured age distributions: Nielsen measures it for each console every month.

Re:not true

[Xest]

Source?

I can't find anything whatsoever on the net to back that up and that age distribution seems highly unlikely. Only 30% of gamers on XBox Live being in the 25+ range doesn't seem realistic whatsoever.

Re:not true

[vgerclover]

Have you ever stopped to think that there is more to gaming than the Xbox? My last console was an SNES, yet I buy and play games regularly, although not as many as I could because most seem way too dull.

Does that mean...

[Gadget_Guy]

Does that mean that if you are 42 years old then you are an above average gamer?

So that's who is kicking my butt in multiplayer! I don't know if that is a better or worse than it being some 12 year old punk.

Re:Does that mean...

[Kensai7]

Haha, had the same thought. Unfortunately, these questionnaires are probably faulty by definition. Most teenagers and kids don't have the time or interest to respond to demographic questions, sliding the bias to higher ages. Moreover many kids just declare a higher age than they really have to avoid "limited version" of a game (no blood, gore, etc).

I would expect the average age to be that of a university student (18-24). Of course it gets higher and higher every year because many of us have grown up with games and continue playing.

Flight simmers are older

[SplashMyBandit]

I'm 39 and a flight simmer (DCS:A-10C, LockOn: Flaming Cliffs 2, DCS:Ka-50 and IL-2:Clifss of Dover). Do play a little bit of twitch gaming but get bored of it. For my flight simming I have thousands of dollars of gear (Thrustmaster Warthog, rudder pedals, Track IR, multiple monitors, high-end PC). Most of my colleagues are of similar maturity and also have full sets of gear. We older gamers might be fewer in numbers but we are a goldmine in value (and we pay for our software since pirating is a complete hassle - and time is more precious to us fogies than money). Too bad we're completely invisible to the main-stream game reporting and gaming companies - especially the latter who produce games with purile content and weak storylines (I mean, effective modern combat units fight *for* their teammates, despite humored grumbling they don't bitch fight among themselves all the time).

Re:Flight simmers are older

[syousef]

You should get a PPL and a light aircraft then.

He said he had thousands of dollars of gear, not hundreds of thousands. And certain medical conditions that afflict gamers will deny you a PPL.

Re:Flight simmers are older

[vlm]

You should get a PPL and a light aircraft then.

Yeah like he's going to afford a war surplus A-10 anytime soon.

I found PPL training and light aircraft flight to be a dramatically different experience than flight sims.

Also its well known in the professional community that sim time totally screws up a real world pilot. Theres plenty of sims with nice graphics and realistic controls, but few/none with accurate simulation of controlled airspace, FAA law enforcement, etc. And I know personally that it horribly screws up judgement, in my sims I pretty much never abort a IFR landing, my judgement, which make sense for a sim flyer, would completely terrify a CFI.

Also medical is a serious issue... My grandfather, a B-24 pilot, simmed for literally decades after medical would have grounded him. Frankly, I don't know if I'd pass a medical, and I'm scared to try, because if I fail, that would DQ me from (ever?) getting a sport pilot license and flying a LSA... And a LSA is pretty boring for a guy with many hours in a A-10...

Re:Flight simmers are older

[Aceticon]

My personal experience having started on a Private Pilot License course (of which I did 12 lessons before I gave up) and flown planes in sims is that real life piloting the kind of plane most people can afford (I flew a Cessna 152 - you can get one which is second hand, 30 years old for about $22k) is incredibly boring compared to flight sims.

To put things in perspective, in real life:
- You can't fly below 1000 feet except during takeoff and landing.
- You have to submit a flight plan when flying between two airfields and if you're going to be late taking off for more than 30 minutes you have to update that flight plan.
- You have to pay attention to permanent restricted airspace (like around major airports), temporary restricted airspace (for example, when a member of the Royal Family - this being the UK - is flying though a certain area) and dangerous areas like nature reservations for water birds at some times of the year.
- Even the cheapest, crapiest plane has to have huge amounts of maintenance (from the top of my head: one every 50h of flight, one every 100h of flight, a yearly one, an expensive - think $5k - engine refurbishment at about 1800h and a propeller refurbishment also at about 2000h)
- The kind of planes that most individuals can afford to fly are SLOOOW (for example, the C-152's cruise speed is 90 knots). In fact, for the same amount of money you can get a car which is much faster and much cheaper to maintain.

Maybe my view on it is a bit tainted, since I received training from an airfield near a major city (London, UK) where essentially you're surrounded on all sides (and above) by reserved airspace (there's reserved airspace for 4 major airports and one minor plus all those Terminal Approach Areas - essentially blocks of reserved airspace above ground level - for the comercial flights to land and take off on those airports), which meant that flying was quite restricted (for example, you had to fly out at least 10 miles before you came to an area where the reserved airspace above you started above 3500 feet).

By comparisson, in a sim you can just jump into pretty much any plane and take off without any significant costs or paperwork and without needing obbey any rules while flying.
That said, the resolution is lower on a sim.

Re:Flight simmers are older

[Rich0]

I'm also a sim enthusiast who has looked into getting a PPL but hasn't committed yet. The situation in the average US suburb is a little less dire as airspace is less restricted generally in the US than the UK (from my limited understanding). When I fly in a sim I usually do look for some level of realism in instruments, ATC, etc as well - though most sims are very limited even with add-ons unless you're talking about something like VATSIM.

The cost is the biggest issue I see. If you're a casual flyer who doesn't go anywhere then your best bet is probably the $100/hr 152-like aircraft. That is expensive, but you don't have to deal with all the maintenance hassles, and it is cheaper than owning an aircraft unless you fly it a LOT. If you do want to use a plane to travel somewhere then you'll need to have some kind of partial ownership as nobody lets you park a rental somewhere for a week without paying for the idle time. The costs of that are considerable.

Also, those cheaper planes not only are only marginally faster than a car, but they carry far less payload. My wife and I can hop in a car and probably fit about half a ton of payload (ourselves and our luggage) if we want to. Small planes don't carry nearly that much, so you'll probably end up FedEx-ing your luggage. That isn't cheap either.

The kind of aircraft that I'd call the "family sedan" of the sky would be something like a small turboprop like a King Air, and those cost millions of dollars (they're not jets by any stretch but they have the kind of performance that most people who don't fly probably envision a plane as having). A twin-engine piston would be what I'd consider the equivalent of a budget family car, and those cost $300k or so. My point isn't whether one model or another is the "ideal" family plane so much that the cost associated with what the average person considers as a "typical" aircraft is VERY high. By "typical" I mean that they could do whatever they could do with a car, take off, fly halfway across the US on a tank of gas, fly at 200mph and clear mountains, carry 4 people and the quantity of luggage you could check on an airline, and so on. Very few people could afford to own the kind of aircraft that does this.

Re:Flight simmers are older

[spire3661]

Seems like the market is serving you just fine. That $500 joystick is anyways.....

Re:Flight simmers are older

[Asmodae]

Depends, If you want a variety of modern combat planes, but slightly less intense sim, Lock On: Flaming Cliffs 2 is a good start. If you want really intense realistic sims the DCS series from the same company has the KA-50 blackshark, and the A10C warthog. All of these sims can play together online, either co-op in missions, or vs.

There are some decent WWII sims out there as well. Wings of Prey was a fairly recent one that I played and found fun. I never messed with the online multiplayer, but it exists.

original

[mustPushCart]

Heres the original pdf of the study.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf

its up from 34 last year apparently. So gamers are ageing 3 years for every 1.

Re:original

[mcvos]

its up from 34 last year apparently. So gamers are ageing 3 years for every 1.

That's it. I'm quitting.

Re:original

[ildon]

Looking at this, I think they're using the age of the person purchasing the game to determine their "age of gamers" instead of the age of the person actually playing the game. Which is obviously going to give you a broken/skewed image, as grandparents and parents purchase games for anyone 5-18 (and that's ignoring things like Christmas/birthday gifts later down the road).

Re:original

[Abstrackt]

Heres the original pdf of the study.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf

its up from 34 last year apparently. So gamers are ageing 3 years for every 1.

That's nothing! As a father, I age 10 years for every 1.

Re:original

[mustPushCart]

lol thanks, i loled.

Re:original

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> its up from 34 last year apparently. So gamers are ageing 3 years for every 1.

Or, perhaps there's some definition creep going on. I know a 48 year old, professional woman with a Farmville addiction. Is she a gamer?

No quite

[pieisgood]

More older people are playing games year on year. That would be the most plausible reason for the discrepancy.

Re:No quite

[Reibisch]

Or that fewer younger players are being inducted.

Re:No quite

[CommieLib]

Or that the rate of adding new younger gamers has decreased.

Future game titles

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sims: Nursing Home

Okay, that's all I got.

Re:Future game titles

[game kid]

The Sims: Nursing Home

That's the one that'll get the expansion packs "Compassionate Care" and "Death With Dignity" six months after release, but only offers two months of play time. :(

More to do with the "age" dropdown box"

[Rsriram]

Many youngsters play games online and simply use 1970 as their year of birth to avoid issues with being underaged. If this survey has been done online, they have to adjust for these data errors in which case they might arrive at a lower age.

Link

[RobinEggs]

So now we're posting submissions without sources that try to make an entire discussion out of a single alleged factoid? Seriously?

Most links I can find on this topic point to CNET, but this is the closest thing I can find to the original source. One website high in the google results links to pdf of this supposed study, but the link is dead.

Re:Link

[RobinEggs]

Oh God dammit I'm an idiot. I did find the original source, it was right on that page. I'd now like to point out, however, that the "study" appears to be a bunch of market research tidbits, for which even the ESA's original presentation doesn't provide a concrete source other than crediting them all to the NPD group. At least, with a few dozen random facts on every page they stop every three pages or so to attribute a particular graph to NPD; other than that and about a million quotes, they don't source anything at all.

This so called study is nothing but the ESA trying to spin a bunch of market research babble into a factual narrative about gamers. They're trying to create the story and history of gaming as it's still developing rather than let it play out naturally.

Re:Link

[kolbe]

Actually, the data gathering was in part carried out by the Nielson Company (was in the original ESA subscriber newsletter), but they did fail to list ALL of their sources within the document. However, next to the Baby Boomers, "Generation X" is the 2nd largest demographic of people in the USA and it does make rather obvious sense in what the ESA is saying. As I posted in another comment, the ESA's official public review of the data can be found here if you are interested.

Re:Link

[kolbe]

Oops! I linked Neilsen instead of the ESA document here: http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp

Re:Link

[RobinEggs]

Um, yeah, that's what I linked to in the first place.

doubtful

[EoN604]

I'd heard these type of claims before, I'd love for it to be true, but I find it VERY hard to believe.

They already are

[atomicbutterfly]

If true, does this mean that game studios should be adjusting their demographics accordingly?

The game studios already are, that's WHY the demographics have changed. The influx of mainstream casual games are the primary reason for the shift. Good games like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies, OK games like Angry Birds, and particularly dodgy ones like FarmVille, they all exist because the studios have wanted to tap into the casual market which traditional games was not suitably targeting. The Wii is also part of this of course, as well as party games like Guitar Hero.

In other words, no, the studios don't have to change a damn thing because it's the studios themselves, by tapping an untapped demographic, which has resulted in the average gamer being 37. Finally all gaming sectors are suitably covered now, from your regular hardcore crazies to my mum.

I do wish we had less regenerating health and popamole combat games though...

Re:They already are

[Hatta]

The influx of mainstream casual games are the primary reason for the shift. Good games like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies, OK games like Angry Birds, and particularly dodgy ones like FarmVille,

Games like that have existed for years. How different is Bejeweled from Columns or Puzzle Bobble? It's yet another colored block matching game. Plants vs Zombies is just tower defense, which has existed in many previous incarnations. Angry Birds was old when it was called Scorched Earth (or Gorillas.bas). Amazingly, Farmville is the most novel of any of those games, but it's nothing more than a Harvest Moon MUD.

All "gaming sectors" have been covered for years. If someone's 50 now, and playing Angry Birds on their iPhone, they were 25-30 when Scorched Earth was popular. What changed in the meantime wasn't the types of games the gaming industry offered. I think they just figured out how to market it.

Re:They already are

[Rich0]

Am I the only one who remembers playing weather wars or artillery on this? That is way older than gorillas.bas...

Re:They already are

[Hatta]

That's why I said it was already old when gorillas.bas was popular. My earliest memory of artillery games were text based games, so long ago that I have no idea what platform it was.

Re:They already are

[Rich0]

Yup, but it made me feel nostalgic just the same. I see that Weather Wars has a C64 port (conceptually - not an exact clone).

I think that the 4051 was a neat platform for this. There was nothing quite like seeing a vector lightning bolt traced on the screen. From my very hazy memories it was a lot more dramatic than what you see on the typical raster non-storage-display terminal that we use today.

Adjust their demographics how?

[mentil]

The major game publishers already do market research which isn't published, they know and have known the age distribution of gamers. The effect that being older has on gaming has been known for years (preference for mature themes, short play sessions, greater access to credit cards, etc.).
I think (some) baby boomers are the only ones surprised that video games aren't just for kids.

How have the stats been collected?

[mehrotra.akash]

If they took into account the age people enter as age verification, then their results wouls be horribly wrong.

For most places, in the age verification column, I enter my age as 100, or DOB as 1 jan 1900 (1 jan is defaukt, just change the yr to 1900)

Re:How have the stats been collected?

[kolbe]

You need to be a subscriber to get the raw sample data information, but their summary is listed here: http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp

Re:What study?

[Yvan256]

Here you go. Link.

At some point they might make games for them too.

[jozmala]

Its just very shameful that game makers consider that games are only played by children and make only that kind of content, 1987 they made only child's games and they didn't fix that by 1996 or 1997 maybe they will fix it now.
______
Its time to kick ass and chew bubble gum. I'm all out of gum.
---------
Please state your age.

Yes sure you are.

To verify your age please answer these five simple questions.
---------
I live again.
---------

The Atari 2600 and PacMan Generation

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to get on a "remember-when" rant, but here I go anyway... I'm 42. I grew up in the late 70s/early 80s. I remember the hand-held electronic games (Galaxy Invader 1000), home video game consoles (first the pong-style games, then Atari VCS, Intellevision, Vectrex!), the first big coin-op games (Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender, Pac Man), home computers (Atari 400/800, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum). This was a new and exciting time. Best toys ever. I never really played board games or sports (until university). It was all video games. New things came monthly... and that continued through the 16-bit era to PCs. I remember Wolfenstein 3D and the original Doom when it was brand new. I remember Half Life. Hell, I remember (and still own) flight simulators for the ZX Spectrum, Atari 800, Atari ST (SubLogic FS:II), and every version of MS Flight Simulator for the PC since 1992. Now I play Wii games and on the PC, Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead.

It doesn't surprise me at all that the average age of gamers is in my neighborhood. Does it surprise anyone (besides youngsters)?

Let me guess

[MikShapi]

The average gamer, as identified through PAID software demographics, is 37.

Put otherwise, the average PAYING gamer is 37.

Re:Let me guess

[Anonymous Coward]

And your point is?

Hint: Pirates do not put food on developers' tables.

Does this study count

[h4x0t]

50 year old women on farmville? Cause I sure don't.

The real source

[kolbe]

I'm not sure why, but my original submission source link did not carry over to the actual post on /. for some reason. First time submitting, so I figure I'll figure it out next time.

In any case, all of these stories out there from C|NET and TIME originate from an ESA Subscriber document posted Monday with analytic data in it. However, you have to be a subscriber to see the raw data. Their official summary of the data is posted here if you are interested.

Personally, I found the data intriguing and since I too fit within their specified demographic (as do many of you), found it news worthy.

Re:The real source

[gmhowell]

Don't be too hard on yourself. The 'editor' could have fixed it or dumped it from the queue if it was that bad.

Nope

[Andtalath]

This suggests that the game market today is most easily accessible and liked by a certain type of people who happens to be 37-41 years old.

My guess?
That's an age where you start to cut back hours on the job and start earning real money.

Buying a bunch of stuff which might be fun for a few hours is worth it then.

Re:Nope

[rohan972]

This suggests that the game market today is most easily accessible and liked by a certain type of people who happens to be 37-41 years old.

My guess?
That's an age where you start to cut back hours on the job and start earning real money.

Hmmm, yes, I'm making more money but my real reason is that we got a console for the kids. Now we play console games together instead of board games and TV like when I was a kid.

Re:Nope

[Andtalath]

True as well.
Parents buying games for their kids or for the both of them is a valid reason as well.

Also, another reason is that you've grown up for real, meaning, you know that it's not mature to not do the things you like just because they aren't serious.

The Important Info

[Ventriloquate]

Average gamer? I think what is important is the total number of gamers and then at what ages those gamers tend to be higher in number.

Who admits to being under 18 except maybe FBI

[Shadukar]

I realize it's the right thing to do for a person of seasoned age to make jokes about how bad/dumb/noob/etc kids are these days (cause these days are so much worse than back in the good old days) but I really doubt any of them are admitting to being under 18 in any sort of online experience - be it surveys or being asked by various forms.

Meanwhile, a lot of companies will ask for your age (to protect themselves from retarded laws most likely but possibly for marketing reasons also). This includes but not limited to going to websites for demos/trailers and/or promotional websites (and also porn ofc).

  I make it a point to select lowest possible year of birth (usually 1900) because "fuk da police"

By similar token I think most under-18s will not actually say they are 18 at any stage because there's just no advantage to saying your real age while there's a very high chance of being forwarded to kids.yahoo.com instead of the good stuff.

"Share This Story"

[thegarbz]

It says at the bottom under the alleged quote. "Share This Story"

WHAT STORY?

Re:"Share This Story"

[kolbe]

When I originally submitted it, the post looked like this. However, the link was lost somehow when it was officially posted. Not sure why. In any case, the link to the story is at this link and originally from this site

Re:"Share This Story"

[thegarbz]

Well... I... am amazed. I'm not sure if I like this new idea of editors actually editing more or less though. :-)

Makes sense I guess

[severn2j]

We (I'm 40) were the first generation to have video games in the home, so it makes sense that we would still be playing them.. I expect that in 20 years, the average age of gamers will be 15-20 years higher than now.

Re:Makes sense I guess

[Your.Master]

Really? 37-41 is already older than the average American, period (I assume this study refers to Americans because the ESA is American). This already implies that older people are more likely to game than younger people. I'll grant that you can take infants out of the young end of potential gamers, and then 37-41 might be below the adjusted average American's age. But upping that range to 52-61 is an enormous skew toward older people playing games and younger people not playing them (either that, or an enormous change in demographics).

Not all games are FPS

[petes_PoV]

If the question was "do you play games on your computer?" then all the people who occasionally fire up solitaire would, obviously, answer YES. There's insufficient information given (and commentators here making a lot of assumptions) as to what sorts of games people play. Most comments seem to think that the whole world is just like them -- and therefore all "gamers" will only play the sorts of games they do.

This report is too limited to have any value.

Stupid

[LS]

does this mean that game studios should be adjusting their demographics accordingly?

Are you actually suggesting that game studios don't do intensive research on market demographics?

Dumbest slashdot "story" ever.

nobody cares

[epine]

What they care about is mean time between purchase at full retail value for the same product every other short-attention-span twitch spender is buying that week.

Even when I gamed a lot, I only bought the epic titles and beat them to death. My passing from the gaming demographic went unnoticed by the marketroids.

The rule of thumb is that bad money drives out good. When the idiot demographic pays too much for bad content, the companies soon lose interest in making the good content.

I'm sure I just opened myself up for contradiction by epic counter-example. I rest my case.

Read the happiness literature on novelty saturation, then estimate the supply/demand curve intersection involving those who haven't.
 

I didn't know ...

[datorum]

... but next time when I see someone in Team Fortress I probably will think "should I help this person crossing the street" before shooting them ...

Yay !

[Pop69]

I'm finally above average in something !

That's a good thing isn't it ?

No Way!

[MrKaos]

No way my mad skillz are average.

Terrible statistics

[pfafrich]

If you look at the PDF you see that they have grouped the ages into three categories. Under 18, 18-49 and 50+. It looks like they have calculated the average from just three data points. As the 18-50 group is so big its skews the average towards the middle value of that group 33. A finer division of groups would probably show a greater number of younger people playing games.

Re:Terrible statistics

[drinkypoo]

The average age is interesting but there's too many people involved for it to tell the average :) person anything. What we need is the median.

Who Plays vs Who Registers

[toebob]

I'm 37 and I buy games to play with my children. I'm the one who completes the purchase, registration, and review/questionaire but there are 4 of us playing and only one (me) is older than 16. Perhaps their data is skewed.

Oh really?

[Tukz]

I find that hard to believe.
Most games I play online, is FULL of pre-pubescent whinny tards.

Or maybe it's averagely 37 yards old, just acting like they're 12?

Probably not, actually

[Moraelin]

Probably not, actually. The median age in the USA is 36.8 years old.

Basically at this point the average gamer is just the average guy. For every guy under 37 that plays video games, there's someone over 37 who also plays video games, AND that's essentially the exact same information you'd get by their ages alone.

Really, gaming has already spread through all age segments. You have preschoolers playing edutainment games, and you even have 80 year old grandmas in WoW raids, and everything in between. (But not everyone admits it. Mom is 30 if you ask her in WoW.)

There isn't really much way for it to go much higher than the median age, unless it actually gets less popular among young 'uns than among senior citizens. I don't think anyone will manage to make gaming unpopular with kids any time soon, so I'd expect that to just follow the median age in the near future.

Re:Probably not, actually

[hurfy]

Nice

My online racing buddies are 11-63 with an average in the 40's. Seems kinda silly to try and pin down your demographics too much :) I did find it interesting to be gaming with someone who is younger than one of my avatars :O

More older folks coming to gaming.

[thesandtiger]

Five years ago you couldn't have paid my father (86) to play a game. Now I can't get him to put down Angry Birds when we go out for breakfast, and when he does shut his phone off he talks about the Kinect yoga thing.

Lot of that kind of thing - older folks playing games - changing the average, I'm sure. And I'm glad for it, since by trying to make games that appeal to non-traditional segments there will likely be more interesting games for me to play.

As it should

[Moraelin]

If including the casual gamers "throws the numbers", then it throws them to their correct value. If someone plays enough Angry Birds or whatever, they are gamers.

Besides, it's pretty stupid to divide some genres as not really games, as this basically would mean a lot of us who started in the early 80's never actually played a game. Most of the games that were available on a ZX-81 or ZX Spectrum or C-64 or even early IBM PC games, didn't even have the complexity of cell phone games these days.

Heck, the whole video game genre started with games like Pong.

I don't think anyone thought that people playing those are anything but gamers. We didn't think, "ah, well, they can't be Real Gamers, because nobody invented Real Gamer games like first person shooters yet."

Of Course they are...

[realsilly]

It was in the 1970's when games really Pong came out and the industry has grown since, and so has it's most loyal fans.

I'm a middle-aged female, and I love gaming. I'm not great at it, but I still enjoy it none-the-less. And why shouldn't I. Games have actually brought families together in my household. Friendly challenges between neighbors were always a blast.

This study, in my opinion, is only stating the obvious.

Questionable age bracket

[sl4shd0rk]

Maybe with unemployment being so high, more people are goofing off gaming. Otherwise, I just don't see how the average, employed, 37 year old has more time to play than the 7-18 year old. Unless they count playing Angry Birds while on the shi#ter as "gaming".

Re:Questionable age bracket

[Shados]

I have a hell of a lot more time to play now that I have a full time job (as opposed to the 100+ hours of school + homework I had in highschool and especially college, per week), and that I'm married (all the household chores are split in half), than I did when i was a teenager.

I had a fair amount of time to play back then, but now its only a matter of deciding if i want to spend the evening playing games, or doing something else.

Re:I am 37, but I dont play games

[Hatta]

Here's a hint. Playing games with the ankle biter counts as "quality time".

Everybody knows..

[xtracto]

In Korea videogames are only for old people.

Could we be talking about free to play games?

[bobs666]

You do not have to be a Pirate to play a free to play game.

Re:Could we be talking about free to play games?

[Rich0]

You also don't need to be a Pirate to play a game your parents paid for, and just because you bought a game for your kid doesn't mean that you will play it.

And how do you defined Average?

[bobs666]

Let me see...

Sum the ages of a set of gamers and divide by the number of gamers in the sample.

I admit you may be asking for more analysis. or more data. But the average is the first order of what you are asking. there is more data if you read the paper.

One of the problems in the USA, where I live, is that to few people know even basic math.

I wonder what the demographic is...

[Assmasher]

...for Slashdot users with 5, 6, and 7 digit IDs.

I used to have a 5 digit and I'm 39. I would guess that most 5 digit users are 33-40. Just a guess though.

Re:I wonder what the demographic is...

[Gunfighter]

Four digits... 36... gamer. Taking a bit of a break right now from gaming due to business / family / life / etc. piling up tasks. Hopefully things will smooth out here in the next few months so I can get some more fraggin' in.

Interesting note: When I was in my prime, active duty USMC, and had cat-like reflexes, I played FPS games. Now, in my old age, I enjoy MMOs more. Food for thought.

Re:I wonder what the demographic is...

[Assmasher]

Ahhh, Counter-Strike, those were the days... I still enjoy the single player story modes (when they have them) of FPS, but no longer have the desire to 'dominate all' in multi-player. Get off my lawn.

Not surprising at all

[cashman73]

I'm pretty close to said "average age" that the article quotes. I wouldn't consider myself an avid gamer, because working full time and having other obligations doesn't leave as much time for games as I'd like; though I do have Steam installed on my computer, and do enjoy a good game of L4D2 or Civilization, and was introduced to Angry Birds by a woman probably in her early forties. I can also remember back in the 80s, when Pac-Man was all the rage, my father played the game (and mastered it) just as well as us kids,. . . So this whole concept of video games being "for youth" is pretty much ludicrous, and based mostly on false stereotypes.

Interesting.

[MaWeiTao]

I'm nearing that age group, and although it doesn't entirely surprise me I would have expected it to skew younger. I'm curious to know if playtime were taking into account if the numbers wouldn't go much younger. A 37-year-old guy might call himself a gamer, but he's lucky to squeeze in an hour a night during the week, most of his time being reserved for the weekend. A young gamer has far more time to devote to playing. Certainly an older gamer has a lot more disposable income but they might be more careful about their purchases. And nowadays I don't see many kids earning income to buy their own games, with the way parents are constantly spending on their children.

I do have a console myself and roughly 10 games. But I haven't purchased anything in about a year now. I still follow what's out there, but I've been finding myself increasingly disinterested in gaming. I don't have the time for it and for some time now I've been finding it to be a waste of my time. Granted, I don't watch many movies either. But a movie only occupies 2 hours of my time and it's done. I don't have time to devote to the amount of time most games require, particularly those I'd be most interested in playing.

Outside the range.

[Virtucon]

I'm on the far end of that box plot whisker there but Custer's Revenge is still running on my system at home. Under DosBox of course... ;-)

Along with that there's the original Leisure Suit Larry series as well. "Ahh Hotel Costalotta."

Yes, some old time games and gamers are still the best!!

Citation Needed

[KidPix]

When you're going to publicize counterintuitive info, you should probably do more to establish the credibility of your source data. I mean, does anyone know how they got these numbers? What games were they looking at? How did they determine who played these games, and what method was used to capture the player's age?

Where are they getting these stats?

[xclr8r]

If it's those web forms that ask your age before seeing a game trailer you can bet it is being skewed by anyone under 18 posting they are above age. I select 99 years old when ever I visit a site that asks my age just to see if it kicks it back and I'm in my late 30s.. and game... head -> desk.

Hello source????

[guspasho]

There's no link so who knows how valid or authoritative this is.

I'd like to know the median. If 37 is the average, and most people who I think of as gamers are 7-17, then there should be just as many 57-67yo gamers, but that's a proposition I find hard to believe. I wonder if the submitter is just making up random shit or if the study is of a poor quality and one person skewed the mean by putting in "One million" as their age.

bad data.... bad!

[chibiskuld]

My guess is, Most of that 37-41 demographic are parents. I think their numbers might be a little off.

what is the age of a computer user?

[Polo]

I'm wondering... what is the average age of a computer user in general? They may be similar or the same.

No such thing

[AP31R0N]

There is no such thing as the average anyone. This lousy phrasing is annoyingly common. It should be: the average age of gamers is 37.