As video gaming has become more popular, thanks to platforms like
Facebook and mobile phones, the industry (and passionate fans) took a
lot of pride in seeing the average age of a "gamer" climb out of the
teens, into the 20s and then the 30s.
So it's a bit weird, then, to see that the average age of a gamer in
the United States has suddenly dropped from 37 to 30. In just one year.
That's an age the industry hadn't seen since 2005.
What gives? Did a whole generation of Wii Sports-addicted pensioners
suddenly kick the bucket? Was the year 2005 a bumper crop for newborn
babies, who are only now reaching for a Nintendo handheld?
Sadly, it's nothing that dramatic (or morbid). Seems the
Entertainment Software Association, who track such things on an annual
basis, decided to change up their methodology, expanding a range of
questions that used to be based only on consoles and PCs to include
newer platforms like the iPhone.
The result is that a whole bunch of kids and younger humans who
weren't originally being included in the data now show up, dragging the
age down. It's good news for stat lovers, as it's obviously more
accurate data, but bad news for those who took some sense of pride from
seeing the average age be somewhere clearly in "adult" territory, rather
than "should be adult but really isn't".
Oh, and if you're wondering what kind of criteria you had to hit to
be considered a "gamer", it was basically anyone who played any of the
listed devices for an hour or longer a week.
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