Are Families No Longer A Priority for the #VideoGame Industry?

By Johner Riehl

June 4, 2012 – After I left the Microsoft press conference earlier today at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, I couldn’t help but think even more strongly about the intense change and identity crisis the “video game industry” is undergoing, and how family games are clearly no longer the priority they once were.

On one hand, organizations like the Entertainment Software Association (www.theesa.org) love to tout statistics on the ubiquity of gamers.  Females make up almost 50% of gamers, they say.  The average age of gamers is approaching 40, they tell us.  Yet at the industry’s showcase event, E3, it’s clear that those facts and figures are stretched, thanks to a broad definition of the term gamer.  E3 is not truly a showcase for the industry’s best and most popular games.  It’s a place where companies take their chance that their game can be the next blockbuster for the audience of core gamers, a term used to describe the most serious and vocal group of gamers, who crave M-rated titles and are more likely to be teen and 20-year-old males than they are 40-year-old housewives.

Continue reading about the trends of video games and which are best for your family >>