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Gamers aged 55+ account for almost a third of gamers now, and that share is on the rise.
(www.midiaresearch.com)
this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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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.