I don’t believe those numbers for a second, and they’re trying to charge 3k for access. That’s absurd.
it’s 100% that they count mobile games as “gaming” so grandma and grandpa playing candy crush and wordle are “gamers” now. They list 11% on console but even that seems high. 23% on PC probably includes wordle too.
It might, but PC would definitely have its share of older gamers. MMORPGs for an example, attract them. I believe the oldest I ran into in my Runescape days was over 70. Of course that’s if you believe peoples’ claimed ages.
My girlfriends 70 year old nana plays horizon zero dawn on PS4, in her words “i die a lot but I’m enjoying it”
MMORPGs for an example, attract them
According to the article: not really, the vast majority of them prefer single player.
Pretty much all MMORPGs nowadays can be played solo.
Minecraft has a surprisingly large chunk of older players too.
My mother plays a lot of solitaire. Are they including that?
They are definitely including casual mobile ‘gamers’ in the 1/3rd number.
The article says 55+ is only around 11% of console gamers, for example.
1/10 is still relatively significant. I would’ve figured that figure was lower.
At that price I believe the report doesn’t even exist and they plan on writing it once some idiot buys it.
Modern science in a nutshell lmao
Are they also all born on January first?
That’s something I failed to consider when reading the headline. 😅
Aren’t we all born on 4/20/69, in our heart of hearts?
no, it’s January 1st 1901.
Does this include mobile games and especially gamefied gambling like candy crush etc because that I can believe.
It is tempting to assume that older gamers exclusively play low-fidelity games on their smartphones. This is simply untrue.
While mobile is certainly the biggest part of the games market in terms of revenues, 55+ gamers account for 23% of monthly PC gamers and 11% of monthly console gamers.
Yeah the conflation of mobile gaming with PC and console gaming is just bad. I don’t know how the cut should be made tbh but this seems silly.
On the other side, more and more midlife+ in online games like Helldivers, cod and such.
Why is it bad? The divide between people who play games on the phone and “real gamers” seems mostly cultural. From a research and financial perspective, there’s no reason to treat them any differently. Dollars are dollars, regardless of what platform they get spent on.
Mobile games are (mostly) pretty linear micro transaction hellscapes. But that is my opinion.
And I fully agree they (mobile games) have their market, which is fine for the people that play them. People can sit on the couch or on their commute and play some levels and spend the time.
The PC and console games are much more complex to create and draw in a completely different player base. It is more of a destination sort of speak.
Tossing these 2 on one pile means it is less clear how each of the markets are developing.
my age old prediction will come true: bingos will be replaced by lan houses just you wait.
I, for one, Welcome our nursing home LAN party overlords…
My generation was the first to have a childhood with video games, so it’s not surprising we’re sticking with them. I certainly have no intention to stop playing them as long as I’m physically able.
I went to school with Ian House. Absolute wanker.
Or rooms of old people all sucked into their screen not talking to eachother
Ya, not surprising. I’m in my late 40’ and game. My father was gaming in his 70’s until his death. My mother, also in her 70’s, plays Minecraft. Video games aren’t the domain of kids anymore. The kids who played them grew up and some folks started to take to them in their later years. They are just another form of entertainment now and not some nerdy, niche thing. Quit trying to gatekeep fun.
I wish this idea caught on to a larger portion of society. There’s a dating site that has questions you can answer and see what a potential match has answered, one of which was “are computer games childish?”
An unfortunately large portion of women (ages 30-45) who answered that answer “yes” :(
(I’m not looking for men so I don’t know how they respond, I wasn’t trying to be sexist lol)
think about the parents of 30-45 year olds and how they might have raised their sons vs their daughters, and also the clear pandering to teenage boys in videogames 20 or so years ago. there’s your answer.
thankfully both are changing with time. there are reactionaries who want to stop this change on both sides, but they will fail just like they failed before.
I’m gonna game until I fucking die.
I’d like to, that’s for sure.
I’m almost out of certified classics to play though and this loot box, cosmetic, buy this, buy that, always online crap don’t appeal to me.
There are plenty of new games without any of that crap.
They are mostly Indie titles but not necessarily.
There’s a shit ton of good indie games out there, getting released every year.
This can happen when the global economy is in the toilet.
If only retirees can afford to participate in a hobby, thats usually an indicator that whatever that hobby is is too expensive. A lower price would make it more prolific and generate more potential sales, likely to increase revenue overall by volume.
Like how Ferrari cars are designed for 20 year olds but only 80 year olds can afford to buy them.
I see your point, but I’m not sure I would argue gaming is an expensive hobby. You can pick up a second-hand console and a handful of games under $500. PC gaming is a different beast (obviously).
To me this number just makes logical sense. A 55 year old could easily have grown up playing video games and leaning into that towards and into retirement seems like a pretty normal next step.
I would fully expect and hope that when I retire in ~25 years I’ll join the ranks of older gamers.
When a single game costs $70 I’d call it an expensive hobby.
Sure, you can buy an old gen console and only purchase old second hand games, but modern gaming is expensive.
$70 at release. Unless you need a play a game right now that price can easily drop by half or more if you wait a year for sales. There are almost no games I buy on day-one anymore.
This has the added bonus of them usually being patched to be less buggy with more quality of life improvements.
Also, $70 is still pretty cheap in the grand scheme of hobbies. Google tells me the average price of a movie ticket is $11. So rounded up that’s 1 game = 6.5 movies. If a movie is 2 hours long that’s 13 hours of enjoyment. I can easily sink 50+ hours into an AAA title (hell my wife just put 110 hours into FF VII Rebirth). That doesn’t count replayability.
That’s my point though, movies are also considered a pretty expensive hobby. People aren’t going to theaters and piracy is sky high currently because it’s simply getting too expensive for a single movie ticket. Tickets near me, for example, are $15 minimum, with some being over $20. So for my family to go to the movies it could be $100 minimum for one movie, and god forbid anyone wants snacks.
And just like gaming, you can simply wait for every movie you want to watch to end up in the bargain bin on dvd, but imo that’s a different discussion entirely. When people talk about a hobby being expensive, they’re usually not talking about the lowest possible entry point.
I guess it would be more accurate to say that gaming and movies can be expensive, not that they inherently are. Like, you can grab a Steam Deck and solely stick to grabbing indie games during sales and ultimately not spend that much, at least relative to the alternative.
Not all gamers are triple A gamers. I’d call myself an avid gamer (I used to put in easily 80 hour weeks gaming, now it’s almost always lower, but I’ll still go on gaming binges during long vacations or holidays).
The vast, vast majority of my time has been WoW and LoL. I have played other games throughout the years, but usually in the same genres (mmo/moba).
A lot of these games have entry fees of below $70. Right now most of my gaming time is cata classic, and that requires $15 a month. Over time that will obviously add up, but everything adds up overtime, and $15 a month is not prohibitively expensive for most people. Also it’s really only $15 for the first month, just by leveling in cata classic to max you make enough to buy a wow token, and can easily pay $0 a month every month by just using in game currency.
Man, have you ever tried bowling or god forbid golf, movies, or guns?
I’ve got games where I’ve paid the equivalent of less than a dollar per hour of entertainment and that’s after optional micro-transactions.
Oh I agree, I addressed all of that in another comment. Even used movies as an example lol.
Back in my day, you paid $20-$30 for a new cartridge or tape and you fucking loved it. That’s about $60-$90 in today’s money.
The purchase price hasn’t changed much, it’s the add on expansions, online access, micro transactions, and miscellaneous bullshit.
You can buy a steam deck and play effectively an unlimited number of hours worth of cheap games. Not going to be everyone’s cup of tea of course but it’s definitely a very accessible way to game price wise.
Totally agree, I actually brought up the Steam Deck in another comment
When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, typical retail price for a game was $50.
That’s equivalent to about $85 today.
The vast majority of the games I buy today are well under $50.
But average buying power is lower today, so dollar value alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
I would expect someone’s whose 55 is probably more interested in classic games anyway. An older friend of mine was in his 20s during the 80s and has fond memories of the arcades, Atari and NES. So that’s what he plays.
That would actually be interesting stats, how many play more older vs newer games. I tend to have phases where I mostly play older games and later go back to newer ones.
PC gaming is much cheaper. A desktop, while being more expensive initially, will last much longer than a console. And the games on PC are much, much cheaper.
Sometimes they’re free! 🏴☠️
I would say that the Steamdeck no longer makes PC gaming a different beast. Prior to that you would definitely lose people in self builds and budgeting complexities.
Games aren’t ferraris. Get out of here with that. Just because you want the billion dollar games to cost $10 doesn’t mean games are out of reach for everyone. Between free-to-play games and the ocean of indie games available online, gaming has never been more accessible.
The reason older people are gaming is because they’re the first generation to have grown up with games as a thing. 55 year olds were children when the Atari came out. They’ve grown up with it. Why would they stop just because they’re older?
I disagree. This is just a market maturing. Gaming is relatively new compared to other media and really started exploding in the late 80’s and 90’s. Someone aged 55 is still a decade away from retirement and has probably been playing games since the late 80’s. It’s totally possible they’ve been gamers the whole time.
And gaming is hardly so expensive as to be compared to Ferrari. There’s still plenty of ways to play games cheap. People pick up used games and older consoles all the time. Even new, games aren’t prohibitively expensive. Don’t get me wrong. A new console is not cheap by any means, but there are plenty of ways to enjoy video games and not spend thousands. You don’t have to have the newest stuff to enjoy games.
Also who said Ferrari’s are designed for 20 year olds?
I think the point is just that young people don’t participate as much as they would because they don’t have the money for it. In previous decades young people had more money to spend.
The relative costs of computers, consoles and games themselves is significantly lower today than in the eighties.
We’d need per capita data over time for each age group to conclude that. Might be in the actual study, but it’s behind an absurd paywall (3000 UK pounds). I think it’s plausible that both groups have been increasing over time, but over 55s increased more. There is probably a hard limit on how many young people are going to enjoy gaming, whereas there is a lot of growth to be had in the over 55s group (as historically, few played games).
Consoles and Gaming PC parts (GPUs especially) are increasing in price at a time when people are struggling to pay their bills. $70 for new games now, or you can pay $120 every year, but you don’t own anything. I meanz, you also don’t own the $70 games either, but you extra don’t own games on a subscription service. Old games are there and fine, but in comparison to the current economy, where inflation around the globe is higher than it has been on average since video games were really a thing, new games are a very expensive hobby.
Directly dollar for dollar, it may be comparable, but taking the economy into picture, games in the past were cheaper. Especially considering how much revenue video games generate now. Prices should be lower, but expected infinite business growth from shareholders is preventing that.
Also who said Ferrari’s are designed for 20 year olds?
Enzo Ferrari, the founder of Ferrari, did. He didn’t specify exactly 20 year olds, but his quote was “I build cars for young men that only rich old men can afford.” Or something similar to that effect, as the quote would have been originally in italian.
When I went to college in 1987, I got sent with a $2000 computer. That’s around $5600 in 2024 dollars. An Atari 2600 was $200 in 1980, which is around $1000 in 2024 dollars. Computer gaming in the 70s and 80s was for kids with rich parents. You could get a little sample, at $0.25 for a few minutes in an arcade, but most of those games would play well on a phone platform today, and you’d be paying something like $15/hour in 2024 dollars.
Today, a desktop computer or laptop is nearly ubiquitous. It may not play the latest AAA at 4k, but neither do most gamers. Even if you exclude mobile gaming, PC and console games are wildly more accessible today than when the 55+ crowd were coming of age.
That doesn’t explain why the 16-34 range is the biggest one by far and why the younger the age group the more likely they are to play online games which usually are far less respecting of players times - people with responsibilities need a pause button.
Many competitive FPS games also fit this category. Play a round for 15 minutes or a few in an hour, get back to life. Games with grind are less attractive - we know it’s all just wasting time.
Like how Ferrari cars are designed for 20 year olds but only 80 year olds can afford to buy them.
I mean, making the comparison to motorsports just emphasizes how cheap gaming is as a hobby.
Autocross is as entry level as you can get and a typical ~$50 entry fee gets you maybe 10 minutes of seat time and it’s typical to need to drive 2-3 hours each way for an event. That’s before you start adding in things like the fact that a $1500 set of tires will last you a season or two at most, suspension and brake upgrades easily running a couple of thousand dollars, etc.
Start dipping into actual track time and fees jump to more like $250-750 plus around that much again for track insurance per event. And the upgrades needed for the car to hold up on track are even more expensive still. And this is all ignoring the purchase price of the car and potentially needing to trailer a dedicated track car.
I’ve almost certainly spent far less on PC gaming in the last 5 years combined than I have on motorsports in the past 3 months. I’m on the upper end of spending for most gamers and a dabbler at best when it comes to the cars.
The insanity of the GPU market since covid has put some upward pressure on things but A. the proliferation of great indie titles means you can get incredible value without breaking bank on the highest end equipment and B. even then, the money I spent literally tonight ordering just brake pads and rotors would buy you a 4070 all day long. And I went cheaper than I could have.
Gaming dollars go a long, long way. It’s a hobby that was affordable even when I was younger and broke. It’s still relatively affordable compared to many, many other hobbies.
And to prove your point even further: my friends and I went go-karting for someone’s stag do a couple of weeks ago and it was £50 per person for two fifteen-minute sessions. And that’s even more entry level than autocross, I’d argue!
We had to get there early, too, and get registered, get changed into overalls and helmet, etc. We had to go through an idiot-proof safety briefing. We had to wait for the previous group to finish their session. We had a break between our two sessions for drinks and to cool down / recover, and another session ran during that time, so ~twenty minutes there. All in all, our half-hour of driving probably came with around an hour and a half of downtime, which I think lowers the value proposition even more.
(Plus I got heatstroke during it and got increasingly ill as the day went on - and was unable to really eat during our restaurant meal or drink at the bars later in the day - which lowered the value proposition even more for me, ha!)
£100/hour of actual go-karting, versus £1/hour for most AAA games these days. I don’t tend to like AAA games that much, for the most part, but even with all their bloat, recycled content, open-world downtime, etc, they still seem like better value per money per time than anything motorsports-related.
I agree with your general point about the economics of hobbies, but I’m not sure it applies here.
If you are sensible about it gaming is, in real buck-per-hour prices, one of the cheapest forms of entertainment available.
how’d they get from 26% in one segment to “almost one third” headline?
Who the fuck buys this drivel for £3,000Surely if someone is buying research, they dont want to literally buy hype.
I had some serious demographic questions to get to 1/3. 26% sounds way more reasonable.
Damn I’m 54, I need to hold on another year…
Just hang on. You’re almost there. Almost 56. Other than some arthritis, gaming ain’t all that bad.
And my kids absolutely will get access to my Steam library after I’m gone. We’ll see what they think about all those AVN, haha!
Just don’t tell Valve!
Ive been playing rocket league since 2015 and I still play and I’m in my thirties. It’s so funny when people get toxic and immediately pull out the “ahh you’re a 12 year old” and then I say I’m in my 30s and it’s all “wow so sad to be playing games so old” get fucked kids the old people are here to play games and you can’t stop us.
I avoid online games because I’m old and don’t have time to practice like teenagers do.
I play online games because they’re still fun even if the teenagers are better than me
I like still being in my gaming prime (28) and already being better than your average FPS gamer.
Top scoring multiple matches in a row to have someone call you a sweaty no-life teenager only to drop that you work 10 hours a day and can still make them look like they’d never touched a controller before is fun every time.
Shit, my dad was going 30:5 in BLOPS II at age 57, he’d wait to use his mic in between rounds to laugh at the people bitching about the sweaty kid. Suddenly this deep ass voice just saying “get good”
If you have fun playing it doesn’t matter how good or bad you are
Dying instantly when I spawn is not fun.
What, you don’t like little kids screaming random slurs at you?
That’s part of the experience
Oh then my only advice is “git gud” :)
I scratch my FPS itch with quick games of Ravenfield. The little stick men don’t yell at me and are almost as bad as I am.
Why would you so casually make me think about how long ago 2015 was :(
My bad
Woo-hoo, I’m a youngster (in this deomgraphic)!
Count me in. Only I wait until the price drops below $20 before ineven consider a purchase.
This is also very likely due to older people seeing gaming as an affordable and enjoyable hobby, which would raise the average age. Gaming is the most accessible it has ever been, so it’d make sense.
Im sorta surpised as even when I was in high school video games were something that was considered nerdy. Most had played them but it was considered a bit like comic books, cartoons, and toys. Something you grew out of. I would expect it to not be a major share until I am well over 55+. I though at first maybe it was just people getting new into it like mobile but the article says they make up 23% of the pc gamers and 11% of console (heck I don’t even play console anymore). I wonder if some were influence by their kids?
I’m almost fifty, started gaming when I was a kid on Sinclair spectrum and BBC computers. Some of the figure is probably people who got into gaming later in life but some is just people who started early and kept going.
yeah but was it cool? Were most kids in high school gaming at your time? Im curious because im a bit over 50 so maybe 1989 or something was the floodgate year. I mean for 55+ to be such a large percentage it would mean a good percentage of the population itself must game in realtion to younger gen right. So I figure something close to 100% of teenagers game nowadays but when I was in high school it might have been under 10%
It seems very cool at the time. First game I remember spending lots of time on was probably Jet Set Willy, in the mid 80s. But yeah, some kids were playing but mostly only those who’s parents had computers. They were expensive and we weren’t well off at all, someone at church lent us one because I got into coding. But you’re right, it was probably around 10%. I would expect that figure to be higher amongst families with more money though probably not much higher.
I was actually the poor kid in a rich area so like my friend had a commodore and the game consoles as they came out (and his family was like average wealth for the area). Money was definitely not stopping most of the kids from being into video games. Arcades were very active to so nothing keeping kids from being into gaming by going to the arcades but again it was a crowd that had almost 100% overlap with the comic book shop.
