35% of American parents are gamers

by Jennie Lees { Jan 26th 2006 at 5:30PM }

It's becoming something of an adage: "families that play together, stay together". If the saying's true, then over a third of American families must be very happy indeed. Study results published by the ESA have revealed that 35% of America's parents are gamers--and four out of five of them share the hobby with their children.

As the gaming generation grows up, these statistics aren't too surprising, but there are a couple of interesting factoids from the report: the average gamer parent is 37, and so didn't necessarily grow up with video games (in fact, the average time spent gaming is 13 years).

Also, 47% of these gamer parents are women--a figure that reflects the proportion of women gamers in general when you take casual and card games into account. Whichever way you read the statistics, gaming is becoming of central importance to many households, and it's here to stay.

Tags: esa, parents, statistics

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Vince UK @ Jan 26th 2006 5:40PM

Yet the 360 is still marketed solely at spotty boys.

SuicideNinja @ Jan 26th 2006 6:06PM

Interesting...my family is definitely not in that percentage.

My mom couldn't handle the NES because it didn't have a joystick...but couldn't advance past Q-bert or Pacman. My dad never really played them, and doesn't show interest. My sister plays Mario Kart...that's about it (glad that Gamecube I bought her is good for something...).

Not to mention my mom thinks that video gaming is purely for "kids". I brought my 360 over to show her otherwise. My Dad was impressed with Call of Duty 2, and I don't think my Mom knew what to say.

Maybe I'll bring it over again and try getting my mom to play Zuma...even bystanders seem to get zombified by that game. That should prove entertaining. However, she still insists on playing solitaire "manually". Drives me nuts.

jabbertrack @ Jan 26th 2006 6:08PM

I think that number is going to go way up in the next 10 years. My parents aren't gamers, but I'm 30 and they are nearly 70... it just was not a part of their culture before they got "old and set in their ways".

Mark Felps @ Jan 26th 2006 6:37PM

Hey, whipper-snapper. You can be 37 and have grown up with videogames, you know? The Odyssey came out in '72 so we would only have been 3, and Pong came out the year after that. If they were really lucky, they might have had a dad that worked on a PDP-1, who let them come in on the weekends and play Space Wars.

Respect the older generation, sonny. We squinted through Pong, Adventure, and E.T. so you could have your next-gen goodness.

Jago @ Jan 26th 2006 7:14PM

That number is definetly going to sky rocket as todays current 20-something generation become parents...and I can't wait for that to happen b/c that will mean that we (I'm 25) will be more knowledgable on the subject of games.

nymph3tamine @ Jan 26th 2006 7:21PM

milfs playing video games? if only they were single...

Vanders @ Jan 26th 2006 9:34PM

I'm 37 and I grew up with video games. We had Pong when I was like 6 and later got Atari and then Intellivison and then NES. Then on my own I had SNES, Sega, N64, GameCube, PS1, PS2, Xbox and 360. I have also had games that ran on Windows 95, 98 and XP as well as Mac OS9 and OS X. So, Yes, people my age can have grown up with video games...and did. All of my friends and schoolmates were into videogames. That's not to mention all of the little handheld games that were around...gee, I even had a Merlin which for the time was fantastic. Speaking of handhelds I also have a Gameboy Advance, Gameboy SP, Nintendo DS and a PSP...which I'm beta testing a game for. So, yeah, we're gamers and proud of it!

PS no kids...I'm glad, because I wouldn't want to share. ;-)