Yahoo posted the results of a video game survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life project. The survey compiled answers from 2,054 U.S. adults late last year.
Among the interesting tidbits:
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More than half of American adults play video games and one in five play just about every day.
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81 percent of respondents between 18 and 29 said they play games, compared with 23 percent of people 65 and older.
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Fifty percent of women and fifty-five percent of men play video games.
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Gamer Education: Fifty-seven percent of respondents went to at least some college; fifty-one percent are high school graduates; and forty percent have less than a high school education.
December 9, 2008 at 5:11 am
The thing I find most surprising about those statistics is the fact that 23% of people over 65 play video games. Surprising i) because these folks grew up in a world without video games and ii) because none of the over 65’s that I know play video games. Is American society that different or is there a huge population of aging “brain training” addicts on the Nintendo DS?
December 9, 2008 at 11:34 am
Hard to say. My father for example does play video games. He’s big on computer solitare as a means to kill time. I also got him a CD full of card games for the PC one year for Christmas. I don’t believe my mother plays any video games.
In my LotRO kinship, there are at least two people (out of forty, give or take) that I know to be over 65 that are active players. There have been probably four or five total over 65, so roughly ten percent at most.
In my old WoW guild on a PvP server, there was one man who was 65 or so. He played WoW with his son and grandson, all of them were in the same guild with me. And if you gave the grandson a hard time in PvP, grandpa would corpse-camp you. (He was retired so it wasn’t like he had any pressing matters to attend to.) He was the only WoW player I knew to be over 65.
The study’s findings seem high but probable based on my own experience. I think things like the Wii / Wii Fit or gaming products which mirror physical games seniors would be familiar with (card games, chess, checkers, etc) probably help push the numbers upward.
December 9, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I found a like to the study results from the Pew organization – http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Adult_gaming_memo.pdf
They have some other interesting bits about MMORPGs.
Also: I was thinking that the results could be skewed depending on where they got they subjects from. It appears however that they used a phone-based means of getting the subjects and the pool they drew from was all over the continental US.
December 10, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Interesting to see the details of the survey Khan. Interestingly the over 65 gamers seem to a dedicated bunch scoring higher on the “play games every day” category than any other group. Also 81% of them do their gaming on a computer which scotches my DS Brain Training hypothesis. The survey implies (without giving figures) that older players are less likely to play mmorpgs. This contradicts my own experience as like you I have met a number of older gamers in mmos. (Lol Its not like I am a teenager myself but at least video games existed when I was a teenager even if it was Space Invaders).
December 10, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I wonder though what the turn-offs are for older players and MMOs. Maybe they figure they’re filled with kids? Or maybe they’re such huge time sinks that older gamers won’t bother with them?
Neat study, anyway.
And I hear you about being an almost-forty myself. My kinship tracks members birthdays and we create happy birthday threads for them. 25, 27, 31, 24 … sheesh! Confounded whippersnappers!
December 12, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Looks like Edward Castronova has a bone to pick with the Pew folks over their study:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2008/12/dear-pew-what-i.html#more
December 19, 2008 at 2:53 pm
My father retired on the Invalid/Disability Pension in the ’90s. He spent a majority of his last few years playing the Forgotten Realms RPGs first on my C64, then later on the PC my brother-in-law got him. He turned 60 in 2002.
After Dad’s death a couple of years ago Mum had trouble sleeping at night. Through my same brother-in-law she was introduced to one of the many online Poker sites…and that’s where she met her current husband. She just turned 60 a year or so back herself.