Know your enemy: demographics of adult American gamers

« Over half of American adults play video games, and four out of five young adults play.
Among adults, computers are the most popular gaming device, but among young adults gaming consoles are preferred.
Virtual worlds only draw a small crowd. »

Obviously american adults are not my enemies, but knowing their habits will help you developing games that they may like.

Pew Internet made a report about adults and video games I suggest you to read.

You will discover that some 53% of American adults age 18 and older and 97% of teens play video games.

More than 70% of adult and teen gamers play on a desktop or laptop… that’s our target.

Here it is an interesting table about demographics of adult gamers:

Nothing against white or black people, but my next videogame hero will be hispanic…

4 Responses

1. dedpbIxto says:

   December 12, 2008 at 3:42 am

   Wow! Nice info! I think, game developers must make games not only for young groups. The 65+ is a new target for experiments in game development! :)

   Reply
2. eichwulf says:

   December 12, 2008 at 12:58 pm

   Actually your conclusion that your game should be aimed at Hispanics is not correct. Firstly, as it says in the legend the reason why Hispanic gamers are a higher percentage of Hispanics is because their population is younger. So, basically the distribution of gamers accross population is the same.
   Another issue is the access to Internet and access to a computer – both are highest in the White population.
   Then we have to take into account the total numbers of each population in the US – it is about 66% White, 12 % Black, and 20% Hispanics. So, its best to target Whites, not Hispanics.
   Your post made me think about this and I think it would be a good idea to target more people by being able to choose your language at the start of the game. It would be best to have English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Chinese Modern, and Japanese. Plus once you translate some common messages and menus you can re-use them in your next games.

   Reply
3. Lawrie says:

   December 12, 2008 at 3:30 pm

   Interesting. I read some other statistics in an issue of the Casual Games Association magazine recently – http://www.casualgamesassociation.org/magazine.php

   - Casual games are a $2.25 billion a year industry.
   - The casual game market is growing at 20% a year.
   - Over 200 million people play casual games each month over the Internet.
   - Men make up 48.3% of casual game players, women 51.7%. However, women account for 74% of paying casual game players.
   - Casual gamers who pay for a subscription and/or are community users average 7 – 15 hours of online play a week.
   - Heaviest play times are right after dinner from 7pm – 9pm and during lunch from 11am – 2pm.
   - The majority of online portals feature catalogs of over 1,000 games and add between 75 to 300 new games to their catalogs each year.
   - Casual games are usually played for a short period of time increments, from five minutes to 20 minutes — though it’s common for people to play one game after another for many hours.

   Meanwhile, the most popular casual games worldwide, according to the CGA, are:

   Solitaire (Microsoft Windows XP)
   Tetris (Tetris Holding, LLC)
   Bejeweled (PopCap Games)
   QQ Games Collection (Tencent China)
   Diner Dash Franchise (PlayFirst)
   Mystery Case Files (Big Fish Games)

   Reply
4. Ernesto Quezada says:

   December 12, 2008 at 4:25 pm

   oh!

   now I know why my most popular game is La Cucaracha! :D

   thanks for the info Emanuele, by the way, we should take into account that these numbers are from 1 year ago and in 1 year the situation could have changed.

   salut!

   Reply