The Digital Gamer: All Grown Up?

Nintendo Wii - Mario Kart - Digital Gamers

On Monday the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog posted The Grown-Up Gamer. As a digital marketer and gamer I decided to check out the article. I thought it would provide me with some new knowledge or bring a unique perspective to the search game. However, the article mainly focused on how gamers are mostly 25 – 54 and that as marketers we shouldn’t be ignoring this target group by just advertising to kids.

Wait! Gamers aren’t kids anymore..? This can’t seriously pass as news worthy in 2009. Its great that Neilson’s did the study and Yahoo felt like posting it but the Entertainment Software Association has been posting this type of demographic information year over year for as long as I can remember. Just look at their industry facts page:

• Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent).
• Sixty-five percent of American households play computer or video games.
• The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for 13 years.
• In 2008, 26 percent of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999

Major newspapers around the world, The Economist and Business Week are covering the industry as more people move towards gaming as their chosen form of entertainment. With the added benefit of games like Halo & Grand Theft Auto and campaigns like I love Bees having brought video games and interactive entertainment into the mainstream even more. The average age of a gamer should not be considered news. If you are in marketing and you don’t know this. Then I believe you’ve been living under a rock of the last 6+ years.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user World of Oddy.

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