Who are the gamers?
Gamer = a young boy. The video game industry evolves so quickly that this equation is not true anymore. New ways of gaming were developed in the last years and how fast the video game world is changing make the gamers change as fast! Before people played on consoles or PC but now, smartphones become a main place to play. These phones give a free access to all genres of games even digital versions of sudoku, card games, backgammon... to so many people. Who play video games nowadays?
“There are just as many people age 50 and older playing games than those under 18, and there are more women playing games than teenage boys.”
When you go to a big conference like PGW, you can see a lot of parents playing with their children and not just watching them, it becomes an activity for all the family. That’s not it, in France in 2019, the average age of a gamer is 40 years old. Those who grew up with video games keep on playing now. Also, who plays more: males, females? According to the Entertainment Software Association, today’s American gamers are 46% female with an average age of 33 and 54% male with an average age of 32. In France, it is 48% female gamers and 52% male ones. Coming nearer to a balance, it will be interesting to check in five years and review the situation.
What about people with disabilities? When you can’t move like anybody else, can you still play? Xbox created an adaptive controller for gamers with special needs and allows you to play on Xbox and Windows 10 PCs. It can only evolve now and create every time more accessibility into the video-game world! Once you see the screen, you don’t pay attention anymore to your neighbor’s controller. Let’s hope that competitors will develop their own alternative tools soon!
Another interesting kind of players is: older people. As board games, video games are a good way to keep up the brain and body. For example, when the first Wii was released, Wii Sport Resorts was used in retirement homes. Now, even older people can have their streaming account on YouTube such as GrandpaGaming whose account exists since 2012! In November 2017 in Sweden, esport team Silver Snipers was created with an average age of 70. They participate in competitions and this summer they even won the world champion in senior Counter Strike.
As everybody can now be a potential player, we hope that it will give developers ideas to create innovative video games!