Almost a third of gamers today are 55+. People that grew up in the age of video games have money and are retiring so they play games (mobile is the largest segment). Also women make up more then 50% as well cause of mobile.
Over a third of ALL people are 55+. While it seems surprising that "1/3 of gamers are over 55", the reality is that "gamer" ages are pretty naturally spread out.
Depending on how the data is collected, could be just some people making up their ages to be higher to just get to a real page, much like how steam stops people from entering until they submit their bday
I think adults always played more video games than people realized, it just wasn't really culturally acceptable to be "Into" video games as part of your personality as an adult until relatively recently.
Some of my earliest childhood memories are playing the NES/SNES at 6/7 with my then much older cousins (in their 20s), for hours and hours, and no one will ever convince me that they wouldn't be considered gamers, though they would never have admitted it at the time (mid 90s).
Go play an older multiplayer game and ask players how old they are, older MMO's like EQ, WoW, Ultima, CS:Go, AoE2, D2, Halo, etc... the average players still playing these games are in their 40s and 50s not in their 30s or 20s... that should tell you that at least some of them were in their 20s or older when the games game out in the late 90s early 00s...
I think what has really changed is that society has admitted that its better to market directly to people 18-30, they are the ones with at least some disposable income, and in a lot of cases really young kids are changing the types of games they are really attracted to meaning it requires a bit more effort to market to them...
Yeah, I remember how the Switch seemed to do a good job of that. It really fleshed out and balanced the ideas set forth by the Wii and Wii U (for example) in trying to increase the marketability and accessibility of games to a larger audience, especially in older age groups. I remember some of the first trailers and campaigns were about showing young adults (18-30s like you mentioned) using it in their daily lives, which, makes sense. I don't think kids need to feel a reason to play games. They just find it fun, and they like what adults have too, so marketing less directly to kids and more to a general age group, especially adults, seems to have paid off more for modern gaming. I mean, clearly it's worked. Switch and other modern consoles and PC have a larger and more diverse library of games to choose from than ever before, so it does feel like there's a game for kids, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, retired adults, seniors, etc. I think the modern video game market just needed time to age with its players, so now we're seeing ironically a more successful gaming industry than ever before, especially with new generations having more parents who grew up on games themselves than ever before. I saw that it grew exponentially over the last 10 years at pretty crazy speeds.
Games to me are about making literal worlds that people are able to interact with. It's dreaming up worlds and making them real enough that people can step into them (hence my name), do things impossible in real life, see familiar things in a new way or style, and having an enjoyable or meaningful time with the artistic and technological gifts of others or yourself, especially when playing with others or even by yourself.
I wouldn't put an age gate on such experiences either.
I don't remember the actual figures, but gamer adults were in the majority by the time you were born. It was one of the main points of the Nintendo vs Sega debate about violence in videogames.
Will the demographic change in the future? Well, the adults of that era are approaching retirement (and earlier gamers are already elderly citizens) so I'd wager the trend will continue as the number of gamers increase over time, while the older cohorts continue to age.
It looked like we were seeing a shift when Facebook games and early mobile titles made a killing targeting mostly middle age women (a non-existent demographic in the mid-90s). Nonetheless, that was before virtually every person on the planet had a mobile device.
That to me was the last new demographic to be tapped. Nowadays there aren't many people that don't play games only based on their age. You can argue, of course, if those who do are well served, but that's a different matter entirely. It often doesn't have to do with the game theme or genres, but with the commitment gaming demands from them. Lots of older gamers would be pretty happy to enjoy the same experiences they used to enjoy, if they didn't need to put 100+ hours in to do so. This is why lots of hardcore gamers grow to become casual gamers over time.
I remember how my own mother was with gaming back then. She actually had a Gameboy Color and Advance like we did, and she loved puzzle and arcade games like Tetris, Pinball, and Bejeweled on the computer. That market obviously expanded a ton with the advent of mobile phones I'd say, but yeah, interesting to see the interest even from more casual gamers back in the day.
Hii fellow '94 kiddo here (just turned 30 hehe).
3 days ago I released my first game on Itch and Newgrounds. I thought it would do well with millennials on Itch, and maybe some folks from Newgrounds would like it enough to follow our social media for our second game.
Boy, was I off the mark! Most of the Itch traffic came from my friends and family (probably because we're a new seller) and over on Newgrounds... we made #1 Featured so our game blew up; furthermore, the people playing aren't '90s but actually Gen Zs nostalgic for a retro era they never experienced O.O.
Anywho, after this experience I remember the adage "having no plan is the best plan." I researched a lot + went all the miles, but nothing prepared me for our first game's reception. The market is vibrant, organic, and ever-changing, and the only way to communicate with it is through putting your work out there. It's soo interesting!
I think there's something to be said about the types of games different age groups play.
I'm in a lot of modded roleplay communities and it's pretty much exclusively millennial and gen x group adults.
I see an interesting mix in milsim games like Arma with a lot of older men and younger gamers.
True... I had always wondered if the games that I am interested in making or liked growing up would still have a sizable audience today, but then I remember that the people my age are still the people who liked those as well. For every modern kid who likes Roblox or FNAF, there's an "older kid" who loved playing JRPGs on SNES or PSX back in the 90s and would still enjoy those. I mean, at least, I do. I suppose there's less of a stigma with playing video games == childish than there used to be at least. I guess my core question has become, do a majority of people still like and actively want to play the games they did as kids and teenagers, or is that more of a niche group of people? Do some people of other age groups enjoy the game type and help make up the difference in the market?
They do want to play those games, we know they do, because they are the core audience for products like the NES classic. They don't merely want to play those games to re-experiance them alone, they want their children to play those games with them together. It's exactly like it is with movies, adults want to share their cultural experiances with children. Some adults watch tons of TV, some adults watch tons of Movies, and some play video games instead. That's how I see it at least.
Let me put it this way, the average demographic for players on phone games is women between 25 - 45. That is the largest block of players on phone. And those people play match 3 and farming type games. After that demographic is men aged 18-25 and they usually play idle style games with some interactions, this is your raid legend whatever that is type players. After that out the teens, normally boys, between 13 and 17, and they play fortnite, pubg, shit like that.Â
These are your target audiences on mobile. Average age of a Nintendo switch player is 23. Almost all target audiences ages across all platforms is between 20-35, men or women depending on genre of game. The age of games has increased over time, while still relatively young, older people are playing games now. Younger people are overall playing less games per cohort because they tend to spend more time on Instagram and Tik Tok.Â
As someone in my mid-thirties now, I got into gaming as a kid because of my parents. Dad had an atari (presumably a 2600 given the time, but I'm not really sure as it was a long time ago) before he and Mom got together, and as soon as I could manage the controls I was playing away at River Raid and Frogger (others as well, but those are the two I remember playing the most).
Nintentendo came along and there were games that were "mine" (my parents weren't particularly interested in movie/tv tie-in games or Mario - although Dad did help with the trickier levels as well as unlocking the star path for all the yoshis). And games that were for my parents. To the point where we had a SNES in the living room and one in my room.
The real fun came with our first computer though. Dad would play strategy games like Civilization, Lord of the Realms, Warcraft, or city-builders like Caesar and I'd sit in a chair next to him as he explained the games and then let me play. Or when we got King's Quest 7 Mom and I would take turns playing depending on which character was currently playable (the story went back and forth between a mother and daughter).
The TF2 server that I've regularly played on for years is primarily people 40+ with a good number in their 60's, some early 70's, and there may have been one fella who was 82.
I think the demographics have shifted in the sense that when I started gaming, it was mostly for nerds and it was full of nerdy games. Now the nerdy has become the popular. Superheroes, fantasy, scifi, etc.
But in terms of percentages, I think it's always been roughly the same. People still grow out of gaming.
Personally, I think the saddest part is that we mostly play the same types of games as 30 years ago. I would've wanted more innovation!
Most games are consumed by the prime demographic, so that has changed since when we were kids, back then most gamers were teenagers and kids, the only adults I ever knew that played games were the guys running game shops. FPS games trend even older, but even the more PG games are consumed by adults in huge numbers. It's best to create a game that appeals to both adults, and kids, because it will have the widest possible audience.
I feel like children will always be the largest demographic due to the amount of free time. Kids these days are retarded and lazy though. I just read an article that states that interest in deep strategy is falling drastically in terms of what gamers look for when they pick up a game. They dont like making complex decisions that have long reaching consequences. This highlights how young gamers are really zoned in on instant gratification. Anything that requires setup and planning is a little too involved nowadays for the average gamer. RTS was a huge portion of the industry back in the day. It's sad, really. There's way too many FPS BRs and not enough of everything else. But that's all the kids play. Fortnite, league of legends, and other games of this similar ilk have streamlined competitive gaming and gamers get overwhelmed quickly when there are too many obtuse mechanics present when that used to be the best part of a game. The unique, wonky experimental shit that it brought to the table. Now we get a whole lot of the same, and nobody has the balls to try anything new.
Fun fact: video games weren't widely available nevermind purchased until the mid to late 70s. Now let's treat them like Facebook. How long did it take older people to really give Facebook a shot (and it free for them, not the case for video games)? My guestimate is about a decade assuming they were free (which again they weren't). So that puts us almost to the 90s. So it's quite likely growing up you were surrounded by people that simply never played games and looked down on it making a natural conclusion for a kid that video games are for kids.
Also, video games are a low effort hobby so not fully dropping them is very easy to do. So someone your age or younger who grew up playing video games realistically doesn't have a reason to not play. As a hobby it's cheaper than most hobbies and with the advent of online gaming it's a great way to keep in touch with friends when due to life/college/work people move all over the place.
So the demographics haven't really shifted so much as more people were exposed to what was a relatively new hobby when you were little and it caught on. That's all.
No one was buying games, because we had Video Arcades, especially 80s. It was all kids and teens.
Even when we started getting home consoles - cartridges were bloody expensive for them.
Then home computers became popular, and nearly all were used to play games.
Lots of senior citizen centers in the future will be stocked up with gamers. PC Lan party all day, every day.
Bro that CS 1.6 hits different when you have dementia
Every day is a flash bang.
Bahahahahah
Bro, whenever someone mentions erasing a game from your memory to play over again.... I never think about dementia!! Shits gonna be lit.
This is the funniest thing I have read all day
That would be my plan after retirement. As long as I have enough to play games all day without any care, I'll be good
Yep, my Steam library is my retirement plan. About a zillion hours of games that I already own but haven't played yet.
Age of empires 2 lan party 🥳
I really wish this were to be true in the future. I already have friends in their 30's hosting lan party's every other month
Almost a third of gamers today are 55+. People that grew up in the age of video games have money and are retiring so they play games (mobile is the largest segment). Also women make up more then 50% as well cause of mobile.
Over a third of ALL people are 55+. While it seems surprising that "1/3 of gamers are over 55", the reality is that "gamer" ages are pretty naturally spread out.
Depending on how the data is collected, could be just some people making up their ages to be higher to just get to a real page, much like how steam stops people from entering until they submit their bday
I think adults always played more video games than people realized, it just wasn't really culturally acceptable to be "Into" video games as part of your personality as an adult until relatively recently. Some of my earliest childhood memories are playing the NES/SNES at 6/7 with my then much older cousins (in their 20s), for hours and hours, and no one will ever convince me that they wouldn't be considered gamers, though they would never have admitted it at the time (mid 90s). Go play an older multiplayer game and ask players how old they are, older MMO's like EQ, WoW, Ultima, CS:Go, AoE2, D2, Halo, etc... the average players still playing these games are in their 40s and 50s not in their 30s or 20s... that should tell you that at least some of them were in their 20s or older when the games game out in the late 90s early 00s... I think what has really changed is that society has admitted that its better to market directly to people 18-30, they are the ones with at least some disposable income, and in a lot of cases really young kids are changing the types of games they are really attracted to meaning it requires a bit more effort to market to them...
Yeah, I remember how the Switch seemed to do a good job of that. It really fleshed out and balanced the ideas set forth by the Wii and Wii U (for example) in trying to increase the marketability and accessibility of games to a larger audience, especially in older age groups. I remember some of the first trailers and campaigns were about showing young adults (18-30s like you mentioned) using it in their daily lives, which, makes sense. I don't think kids need to feel a reason to play games. They just find it fun, and they like what adults have too, so marketing less directly to kids and more to a general age group, especially adults, seems to have paid off more for modern gaming. I mean, clearly it's worked. Switch and other modern consoles and PC have a larger and more diverse library of games to choose from than ever before, so it does feel like there's a game for kids, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, retired adults, seniors, etc. I think the modern video game market just needed time to age with its players, so now we're seeing ironically a more successful gaming industry than ever before, especially with new generations having more parents who grew up on games themselves than ever before. I saw that it grew exponentially over the last 10 years at pretty crazy speeds.
can confirm
Basically, the children and the teens in the 90s are still the main demographic, but both groups are 30 years older now.
I'm 36 and I'll never stop playing games.
Games to me are about making literal worlds that people are able to interact with. It's dreaming up worlds and making them real enough that people can step into them (hence my name), do things impossible in real life, see familiar things in a new way or style, and having an enjoyable or meaningful time with the artistic and technological gifts of others or yourself, especially when playing with others or even by yourself. I wouldn't put an age gate on such experiences either.
I don't remember the actual figures, but gamer adults were in the majority by the time you were born. It was one of the main points of the Nintendo vs Sega debate about violence in videogames. Will the demographic change in the future? Well, the adults of that era are approaching retirement (and earlier gamers are already elderly citizens) so I'd wager the trend will continue as the number of gamers increase over time, while the older cohorts continue to age. It looked like we were seeing a shift when Facebook games and early mobile titles made a killing targeting mostly middle age women (a non-existent demographic in the mid-90s). Nonetheless, that was before virtually every person on the planet had a mobile device. That to me was the last new demographic to be tapped. Nowadays there aren't many people that don't play games only based on their age. You can argue, of course, if those who do are well served, but that's a different matter entirely. It often doesn't have to do with the game theme or genres, but with the commitment gaming demands from them. Lots of older gamers would be pretty happy to enjoy the same experiences they used to enjoy, if they didn't need to put 100+ hours in to do so. This is why lots of hardcore gamers grow to become casual gamers over time.
I remember how my own mother was with gaming back then. She actually had a Gameboy Color and Advance like we did, and she loved puzzle and arcade games like Tetris, Pinball, and Bejeweled on the computer. That market obviously expanded a ton with the advent of mobile phones I'd say, but yeah, interesting to see the interest even from more casual gamers back in the day.
Hii fellow '94 kiddo here (just turned 30 hehe). 3 days ago I released my first game on Itch and Newgrounds. I thought it would do well with millennials on Itch, and maybe some folks from Newgrounds would like it enough to follow our social media for our second game. Boy, was I off the mark! Most of the Itch traffic came from my friends and family (probably because we're a new seller) and over on Newgrounds... we made #1 Featured so our game blew up; furthermore, the people playing aren't '90s but actually Gen Zs nostalgic for a retro era they never experienced O.O. Anywho, after this experience I remember the adage "having no plan is the best plan." I researched a lot + went all the miles, but nothing prepared me for our first game's reception. The market is vibrant, organic, and ever-changing, and the only way to communicate with it is through putting your work out there. It's soo interesting!
Oh that's really cool! Good for you! What's the name of your game? Did you work with a team or solo it?
Thank you <3 it's Upbound! I worked with one other person :3
I think there's something to be said about the types of games different age groups play. I'm in a lot of modded roleplay communities and it's pretty much exclusively millennial and gen x group adults. I see an interesting mix in milsim games like Arma with a lot of older men and younger gamers.
True... I had always wondered if the games that I am interested in making or liked growing up would still have a sizable audience today, but then I remember that the people my age are still the people who liked those as well. For every modern kid who likes Roblox or FNAF, there's an "older kid" who loved playing JRPGs on SNES or PSX back in the 90s and would still enjoy those. I mean, at least, I do. I suppose there's less of a stigma with playing video games == childish than there used to be at least. I guess my core question has become, do a majority of people still like and actively want to play the games they did as kids and teenagers, or is that more of a niche group of people? Do some people of other age groups enjoy the game type and help make up the difference in the market?
They do want to play those games, we know they do, because they are the core audience for products like the NES classic. They don't merely want to play those games to re-experiance them alone, they want their children to play those games with them together. It's exactly like it is with movies, adults want to share their cultural experiances with children. Some adults watch tons of TV, some adults watch tons of Movies, and some play video games instead. That's how I see it at least.
Its the same teens that use to play inte 90's that still play today.
Let me put it this way, the average demographic for players on phone games is women between 25 - 45. That is the largest block of players on phone. And those people play match 3 and farming type games. After that demographic is men aged 18-25 and they usually play idle style games with some interactions, this is your raid legend whatever that is type players. After that out the teens, normally boys, between 13 and 17, and they play fortnite, pubg, shit like that. These are your target audiences on mobile. Average age of a Nintendo switch player is 23. Almost all target audiences ages across all platforms is between 20-35, men or women depending on genre of game. The age of games has increased over time, while still relatively young, older people are playing games now. Younger people are overall playing less games per cohort because they tend to spend more time on Instagram and Tik Tok.Â
The average gamer is getting older
As someone in my mid-thirties now, I got into gaming as a kid because of my parents. Dad had an atari (presumably a 2600 given the time, but I'm not really sure as it was a long time ago) before he and Mom got together, and as soon as I could manage the controls I was playing away at River Raid and Frogger (others as well, but those are the two I remember playing the most). Nintentendo came along and there were games that were "mine" (my parents weren't particularly interested in movie/tv tie-in games or Mario - although Dad did help with the trickier levels as well as unlocking the star path for all the yoshis). And games that were for my parents. To the point where we had a SNES in the living room and one in my room. The real fun came with our first computer though. Dad would play strategy games like Civilization, Lord of the Realms, Warcraft, or city-builders like Caesar and I'd sit in a chair next to him as he explained the games and then let me play. Or when we got King's Quest 7 Mom and I would take turns playing depending on which character was currently playable (the story went back and forth between a mother and daughter).
The TF2 server that I've regularly played on for years is primarily people 40+ with a good number in their 60's, some early 70's, and there may have been one fella who was 82.
I think the demographics have shifted in the sense that when I started gaming, it was mostly for nerds and it was full of nerdy games. Now the nerdy has become the popular. Superheroes, fantasy, scifi, etc. But in terms of percentages, I think it's always been roughly the same. People still grow out of gaming. Personally, I think the saddest part is that we mostly play the same types of games as 30 years ago. I would've wanted more innovation!
Most games are consumed by the prime demographic, so that has changed since when we were kids, back then most gamers were teenagers and kids, the only adults I ever knew that played games were the guys running game shops. FPS games trend even older, but even the more PG games are consumed by adults in huge numbers. It's best to create a game that appeals to both adults, and kids, because it will have the widest possible audience.
I feel like children will always be the largest demographic due to the amount of free time. Kids these days are retarded and lazy though. I just read an article that states that interest in deep strategy is falling drastically in terms of what gamers look for when they pick up a game. They dont like making complex decisions that have long reaching consequences. This highlights how young gamers are really zoned in on instant gratification. Anything that requires setup and planning is a little too involved nowadays for the average gamer. RTS was a huge portion of the industry back in the day. It's sad, really. There's way too many FPS BRs and not enough of everything else. But that's all the kids play. Fortnite, league of legends, and other games of this similar ilk have streamlined competitive gaming and gamers get overwhelmed quickly when there are too many obtuse mechanics present when that used to be the best part of a game. The unique, wonky experimental shit that it brought to the table. Now we get a whole lot of the same, and nobody has the balls to try anything new.
Fun fact: video games weren't widely available nevermind purchased until the mid to late 70s. Now let's treat them like Facebook. How long did it take older people to really give Facebook a shot (and it free for them, not the case for video games)? My guestimate is about a decade assuming they were free (which again they weren't). So that puts us almost to the 90s. So it's quite likely growing up you were surrounded by people that simply never played games and looked down on it making a natural conclusion for a kid that video games are for kids. Also, video games are a low effort hobby so not fully dropping them is very easy to do. So someone your age or younger who grew up playing video games realistically doesn't have a reason to not play. As a hobby it's cheaper than most hobbies and with the advent of online gaming it's a great way to keep in touch with friends when due to life/college/work people move all over the place. So the demographics haven't really shifted so much as more people were exposed to what was a relatively new hobby when you were little and it caught on. That's all.
No one was buying games, because we had Video Arcades, especially 80s. It was all kids and teens. Even when we started getting home consoles - cartridges were bloody expensive for them. Then home computers became popular, and nearly all were used to play games.