First Person Shooters: Teens to 30s
You cannot get enough of shooting zombies, Nazis, aliens and your friends, and statistics show on average, that you are towards the younger end. Action and competition are two factors that become less desirable as you get older. The First Person Shooter genre has certainly changed a lot since Wolfenstein 3D and Doom first popularized the genre in the early 1990s. Fortnite is drawing in an even younger crowd, with its cartoony visuals and free-to-play model.
MMOs: 20s and 30s
EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic – whether the setting is fantasy or sci-fi, you just love competing quests and levelling up with your friends. Players between the ages of 18 and 30 make up 50% of the total player base of MMOs in the US. The heyday of MMOs was in the mid-2000s and early 2010s, as new genres such as MOBAs began to grow. However, in 2015, World of Warcraft still had 5.5 million subscribers.
Casino and online gambling: Middle-aged
Statistics suggest that it's the people who came of age in the 80s and 90s, Generation X, who are the most into casino and online gambling games. Maybe they're still inspired by the high-risk thrills of Wall Street. Online games like slots, cards, and roulette have undergone a modern day revival, with popular games now offering different variations, and pop culture inspired slot games topping popularity lists. Stakers offer games based on popular movies, and also have many well known figures incorporated into their slots, making them extremely user friendly.
Puzzle games: Middle-aged and older
As mentioned above, the draw of action and competition decreases with age. Older people are also less likely to see games as important, so games you can just pick up and play for 10 minutes hold more appeal. Puzzle and brain training games are found to have higher demand among middle-aged and older gamers. Additionally, studies have found that puzzle games could have the potential to help with cognitive impairment.
Mobile games: Everyone
Mobile is not a genre, no, but it is the only platform that dominates in every single demographic. This chart shows that the number of mobile gamers has increased enormously since 2013 and will continue to increase through to 2020. In 2017, the percentage of mobile phone users who were also mobile gamers was at 72.3% and by 2020, this is projected to rise to 77% – more than three-quarters of all mobile users in the US.
Conclusion
Of course, this is all based on averages and you can play whatever you want (assuming you're not a child who wants to play Doom). More than any other entertainment medium, video games have variety. Whether you're into immersive action-adventure games, RPGs to sink hundreds of hours into, split-second-timing FPS firefights or more relaxed puzzling, there are so many options for you, no matter what age you are.
