Average gamer is 37 years old

Video Game Play Increases as Breadth of Game Content Grows

I was like WTF?! Sure, I'm 26 and play videogames, but I never thought the average gamer would be 37! So, when (if?) I reach 37, people that don't play videogames will be the nerds?

Of course, more than half in this research are smartphone-players, but that still counts, doesn't it?

What do you think?

Are people who don't read books nerds?

Considering Facebook and Android/iPhone, I am not surprised.

cbronson said:

Of course, more than half in this research are smartphone-players, but that still counts, doesn't it?

Of course it still counts, they're still games aren't they? It also said nothing of the sort that they're exclusively smartphone gamers.

I have a gaming-grade PC, NES, Droid, and Xbox 360 (in descending order of use), I play on all of them. I can be classified as all three of PC gamer, console gamer, and smartphone gamer. :)

Funny, considering videogames are toys [/cranky old bigoted viewpoint]

Edit: Oh yeah also in most first world countries (IE the ones where people are playing videogames instead of starving or rioting) the average age of the population is rising because people are having less children.

But are they gamers or people who just occasionally play Farmville?

They're the same. Setting standards on what makes a "gamer" is stupid as hell. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be given the Doom hanging bodies treatment.

Had a co-worker once who was twice my age and spent a lot of time playing WoW. His wife didn't mind. Maybe she just didn't care as long as he played those Harry Potter games with his kids. He said they were pretty good.

I've had several teachers, professors, and instructors in various places who loved games a lot. My science teacher in junior high was a big fan of DOOOM II.

And working at Dell, I met many middle-aged gamers. There were women addicted to weird MMOs, people of all stripes playing WoW, guys who wanted help running the newest X-Plane, and lots of mothers with a big library of Pop-Cap games.

Gamers come in all forms there seems to be more and more of them all the time. It's a good thing, if only for the perception of games by the public. Now if only we could convince Germany that all games are not children's toys.

37? As young as that eh? :P

Yeah that sounds about right. Home computers and game consoles have been around since the early 80's. In the 70's people played boardgames, wargames, RPGs, arcade & pinball games. None of this stuff is new... Many of the kids who grew up around them are probably still playing games in some form or another.

DuckReconMajor said:

Are people who don't read books nerds?

Heh, no.

Anyway, I think I can count in one hand people of my age I've met that play videogames. Even my old friends don't play anymore. Last month, I met this guy I went to elementary school with. We used to play games on my 486 all the time. He asked "hey do you still play [computer games]?" I replied "sure, in fact, I still play Doom", then he stared at me and said "whoa! you're really old school dude! I haven't played anything for ages!".

The conversation didn't last long...

Sorry for making the averages a little too high for your comfort.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to hobble on over and try to max kill Dead Simple UV with the Chainsaw.

Still crazy after alllll these years...

Yes, singing aloud today. Life is short.

I think there was a Dank & Scud strip or something with the old doomguy in a wheelchair, still fraggin' monsters...

Jodwin said:

But are they gamers or people who just occasionally play Farmville?

"Gamer" is nothing but a self-imposed loser label. Seriously, video games as a counterculture is fucking lame.

DuckReconMajor said:

They're the same. Setting standards on what makes a "gamer" is stupid as hell. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be given the Doom hanging bodies treatment.

Truer words have never been spoken.

I tried playing farmville. It's not a game. More like "pseudo-interactive cartoon"

I wonder what the average age of an MMORPG gamer is? Of a serious gamer? (spends most of their free time gaming) Of a hardcore gamer (spends most of their time gaming)?

I hope you quit FarmVille like I did Mafia Wars. Those games are such scams.

My mom plays bejewled, which is actually a cool game. I bet games like that appeal to a wider age range

Quite a few adults also play Nintendo DS games. Not so much the Pokemon stuff, but things like puzzles, board/strategy games, simulations, and stuff like Nintendogs, etc.

And Australia is only now considering an adult rating....

Huh. 37? I thought I heard about it being older than that.

Not surprised really. Most of the members of my wow raid team are actually middle-aged, some even mums/dads. I'd imagine you would get a different average age looking just at fps games though :P

That'd be funny if the average human is 37 years old, thus making the gamer statistic moot meaning everyone plays games (average human life expectancy is 78 so seems close).

Yeah but the older ones tend to play different games. Mind you, those are fun too, and in fact I'd rather play them than a lot of the mindless rehashes of old concepts that pass for games on computer and console systems.

SlayeR said:

Not surprised really. Most of the members of my wow raid team are actually middle-aged, some even mums/dads. I'd imagine you would get a different average age looking just at fps games though :P

When I was playing WoW, there were whole families in both guilds I was in.

cbronson said:

I was like WTF?! Sure, I'm 26 and play videogames, but I never thought the average gamer would be 37!

You can blame my mother, she's 81 and still playing video games.

I dunno, but I got friends in Mainland China who still likes to surf at internet at age 40. I am just 20 now, but I have once heard old people likes playing on pc games.

Danarchy said:

When I was playing WoW, there were whole families in both guilds I was in.

One of my old friends is in said families. His parents, brother and sister, and even some of his uncles and cousins would all play world of warcraft together.

When I played Tibia I was in a guild with a mother and her son. She met her husband playing Tibia years ago, since then he's lost interest in it.

Stroggos said:

And Australia is only now considering an adult rating....

R18+ rating on hold for now.

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/264507,todays-r18-decision-the-bad-news-and-the-good.aspx

Responses Oslo shooting and violent games. Must read.

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/264766,responses-to-the-oslo-massacre-and-violent-gaming.aspx

Hopefully gamers can be treated like adults eveentually.

Those surveys are skewed in that they:

1. Are US-centric
   
2. Consider casual gaming as a peer and equal of dedicated and hardcore gaming
   
3. They do not take playing time/frequency into account.
   

So they could very well consider touching a farmville icon once in a year to be just as much "gaming" as being dedicated enough to set up a DOSBox rig and "melt" over it 10 hours a day, or with being a russki CS kiddie that spends 20+ hours a day in a CS cyber cafe. Sorry, but that's like saying that the percentage of medical doctors or athletes in the general population is 100%, since almost everybody will have done a short sprint once in a while or taken a self-prescribed aspirin. Or, for a more hip example, that the percentage of "musicians" has risen because with Guitar Hero, everybody and his grandmother can now be a guitar slinger....not (with a Borat accent).

Yeah. Surveys like this are incomprehensive and full of bullshit twisted statistics. I don't believe for a moment that the average age of a player is ~40, considering it's only in quite recent years that playing games has become a mainstream thing to do and people 50 and over typically don't know Doom from Farmville from Call of Duty from Sonic. At a guess I'd say the average age is ~30... but then I don't have a clue, neither do I care. All I know for certain is that you can't take a handful of people from one corner of the planet as use their lifestyle preferences as accurate statistics for the whole population.