cbronson Posted July 26, 2011 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? 0 Share this post Link to post
DuckReconMajor Posted July 26, 2011 Are people who don't read books nerds? 0 Share this post Link to post
chungy Posted July 26, 2011 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. :) 0 Share this post Link to post
deathbringer Posted July 26, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
Jodwin Posted July 26, 2011 But are they gamers or people who just occasionally play Farmville? 0 Share this post Link to post
DuckReconMajor Posted July 26, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
Aliotroph? Posted July 26, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
hex11 Posted July 26, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
cbronson Posted July 26, 2011 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... 0 Share this post Link to post
bytor Posted July 26, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
hex11 Posted July 26, 2011 I think there was a Dank & Scud strip or something with the old doomguy in a wheelchair, still fraggin' monsters... 0 Share this post Link to post
Technician Posted July 26, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
magicsofa Posted July 26, 2011 I tried playing farmville. It's not a game. More like "pseudo-interactive cartoon" 0 Share this post Link to post
Pure Hellspawn Posted July 26, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
magicsofa Posted July 27, 2011 My mom plays bejewled, which is actually a cool game. I bet games like that appeal to a wider age range 0 Share this post Link to post
hex11 Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
Stroggos Posted July 27, 2011 And Australia is only now considering an adult rating.... 0 Share this post Link to post
Xaser Posted July 27, 2011 Huh. 37? I thought I heard about it being older than that. 0 Share this post Link to post
sirjuddington Posted July 27, 2011 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 0 Share this post Link to post
gggmork Posted July 27, 2011 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). 0 Share this post Link to post
hex11 Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
Sharessa Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
Daiyu_Xiaoxiang Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
lupinx-Kassman Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
Belial Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
neubejiita Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted July 27, 2011 Those surveys are skewed in that they: Are US-centric Consider casual gaming as a peer and equal of dedicated and hardcore gaming 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). 0 Share this post Link to post
DoomUK Posted July 27, 2011 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. 0 Share this post Link to post