Mobility Scooters
It’s tempting to assume this is all explained away by mobile gaming. As is always the case with the ESA Essential Facts report, it’s important to remember that the organization exists to promote the video gaming industry (and not always in the interests of those who play them, not least in its current revolting stance taken against the Stop Killing Games movement), and as such it tends to obfuscate its data in ways that somewhat obscure the reality of who is playing what. The way the ESA deliberately muddies mobile gaming and console/PC is certainly unhelpful for understanding the industry, but beneficial to its interests. (But hey, it’s better than the way it used to include completely dishonest and made up figures on money “lost” to “piracy” back in the 00s!)
Yet, looking through the more detailed breakdown of the figures, while the so-called Silent generation hasn’t exactly embraced modern consoles (although 7 percent report they are!), PC still gets a pretty hefty look-in. Unhelpfully the ESA combines Boomer (62-80) and Silent together here, and in line with every other age group 84 percent of older games players are regularly on their mobile, but 39 percent report gaming on PC too. Yes, the majority of this could well be Snood, but given many in the age bracket are those who embraced gaming in the ’70s and ’80s, it’s going to include a fair amount of the likes of Civ 7 or Skyrim.
But yes, the survey is always very careful not to usefully break down just how much of its numbers are actually made up of free-to-play mobile puzzle games, its time seemingly instead taken up with filling pages saying just very important and adored are its ESRB ratings. The only giveaway is the genre section that shows Puzzle massively ahead of everything else, played by 59 percent of those who say they game for more than an hour a week, and reaches 74 percent for Boomers/Silent players. The next highest in the age bracket is whatever “Skill & Chance” games are at 53 percent, and then plummets to 21 percent for “Arcade & Other.” Role Playing and Shooter are in single digits.
Do no evil
The rest of the report is the usual emphasizing of the significantly large numbers of adults who play games with children, and those who self-report gaming as a very positive aspect of their lives. And yes, it’s all true, always has been true, and always will be ignored by the wider media that reacts in astonishment every time a gaming story breaks through to the morning news consciousness. (“Games have come a long way since Pong!” they’ll exclaim for all of eternity.)
Now if only the ESA could drop its deeply tedious obsession with DRM and get behind games preservation, we could perhaps celebrate these figures with slightly less cynicism.