Former Gamers Want More Social Games

Gamasutra is running a series of studies on what people from certain demographics want from games. Their most recent article takes a look at former gamers, from the age of 25 to 35, and how they view their old hobby. Many seem to have replaced games with social networking during their non-productive time, and they also tend to favor games they can play with friends in the same room, rather than anonymous online interaction. Previous parts of the study focused on family gamers and older gamers. "We had some of our test consoles rigged up to an internet connection to see how these Missing Gamers would respond to online play. But whilst they were initially impressed at the ability to play with other people all over the world, they soon picked up on the fact that many of the people they were playing with were either too good, or too immature to endure for any length of time. It wasn't long before the online games were abandoned in favor of the simpler split-screen local multiplayer offerings. The ability to nudge, rib, and cajole each other on the sofa (not to mention share snacks and drinks) was simply too much fun to resist."

Older gamers DO exist!

[cailith1970]

From what I've seen, people enjoy gmes of all sorts at any age. There is a group called The Older Gamers at http://www.theoldergamers.com/ [theoldergamers.com] that specifically cater to people who play games (online and otherwise) who are over the age of 25. You have 30 year olds playing MMOs, and 70 year olds playing FPS, so I don't think you can profile players and the types of games they play by their age.

For the vast majority of these people, their social networking is done via the games themselves or in the forums that discuss the games they play, or general ones. The only commonality is that they play computer games of some sort. And it's massive now, internationally, given how far it's come since it started in 2002 in a little corner of Australia.

So I'll dispute their claim that people give up games for social networking sites as they get older; they tend to be social with other gamers!