Games companies should try to appeal more to older people – Reader’s Feature

With the average age of gamers edging towards 40, a reader doesn’t understand why publishers are so fixated on appealing to younger fans.

Being a father of two I know all too much about what kind of things kids enjoy and I can tell you it has very little in common with what I liked as a kid. My oldest is 10 now and between YouTube, Minecraft, and Roblox I barely see any worth in anything they like. Minecraft is good in theory, since they’re making things themselves, but most of the time they just seem to mess around and use it as an excuse to talk to their friends online. The fact that it’s a game barely ever seems to come into.

Now, as parents, we’re pretty strict about how much time they spend on anything, and how they use things like Roblox and YouTube, but we try not to be too controlling and know fine well that they do all these things when they’re round friends’ houses, so there’s only so much control you’ve got anyway.

As a father I’ve tried to get my kids interested in traditional console and PC games, but it’s never really taken. Sometimes something will catch their eye for a while – they both really liked Pikmin 4 for some reason – but always it’s a distraction and never a long-term interest.

Speaking to other parents, this seem to be commonplace and if they are interested in other games other than the big two it’s always mobile trash, but my two don’t even really care about that. Although the oldest is starting to get more into Fortnite. Obviously, I’m just talking about the people around me but we often hear about how kids aren’t interested in traditional games, and so I don’t feel my situation is particularly unusual for here or anywhere in the West.

The sad fact is, kids don’t seem interested in normal video games. Maybe they’ll get into them at some point but if there is a magic age that they will nobody I know has witnessed it. If they get into gaming when they’re in their 20s then great, but then they’re not kids anymore.

I feel there’s two things to do in this situation: either make a lot more games appealing to kids or just give up entirely and focus on adults. I would honestly probably prefer the first option, but I can’t see it ever happening. Most publishers, including Sony and Microsoft, gave up making games aimed at kids years and years ago, which is no doubt one of the main reasons we’ve got the situation we have today.

Sony suddenly remembering that kids are a thing that exists every five years or so (Astro Bot was great!) isn’t going to change anything and I think the problem is that because games are so expensive to make, they can’t risk making something that’s only going to appeal to under-15s or lower.

Everything they do implies they’ve given up on the kids’ market, which makes me wonder who video games are even for anymore? They’re all marketed as if they’re aimed at a late teen/early 20s audience but the last thing I saw put the average age of gamers at 37 and getting older all the time. If that’s your audience, why don’t you lean into it more?

I’m not surprised something like Star Wars Zero Company did better than expected, because Star Wars and strategy games are two things middle age people are much more likely to enjoy than younger gamers. So are graphic adventures, computer role-players, 3D platformers, rhythm action games, rail shooters, and whatever other dead genre you happen to like but which nowadays are only made by indie developers – if at all.

This is why older gamers get frustrated when publishers, especially Sony, waste all their time and money on live service games, because we know they probably won’t work out. And a large part is that they’re aiming themselves at a youth market that just isn’t there.

Younger people aren’t sitting around all day trying out different live service games to see if they like them, just because they play Fortnite. They’ve already got what they want out of gaming, and they’re not interested in going any further.

Sometimes I think the reason publishers don’t appeal more to older gamers is simply because they know we won’t spend as much money on microtransactions. We’re just not the people they seem to want to sell too and yet we’re by far the biggest audience. The fact that those two things are so out of alignment probably explains a lot that’s wrong with gaming today.

By reader Cobalt84

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