We’re a week gone from the Supreme Court’s historic ruling on Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which declared that video games should enjoy the same protections as other forms of art. Like the ruling in the 1952 Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson case did for film, the Brown decision moves video games from being categorized as business to being categorized, for legal purposes, as art. But what’s driven legislation like the California law struck down by the Brown decision has been a shallow understanding of who plays video games and why they engage with the medium. Visions of crazed pre-teen boys hopped up on hyper-violent shoot-em-ups are what drive well-meaning but under-informed parents and constituents to tacitly co-sign laws that overreact. The ESRB already rates the industry’s content into age-appropriate categories, as well as doing “mystery shop” audits at thousands of stores each year to see that their guidance is actually being implemented. (MORE: Violent Video Games: The Top 8 Big Money Franchises) Further proof of the actual realities of who’s playing and buying video games came out this week in the form of the Entertainment Software Association’s annual “Essential Facts” report. The research in the reports refutes some commonly-held notions about video games and the way they filter through society. Here are a few highlights: That whole teenage-boy fixation? Barking up the wrong tree: The average game player age is 37, with 18% under 18 years old, 53% aged between 18-49 years and 29% in the 50+ range. And the ESA’s research also finds that women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (37%) than boys age 17 or younger (13%). It’s social, but not necessarily in the way you’d think: Sixty-five percent of gamers play games with other gamers in person, an increase from 64% in 2010 and from 62% in 2009. And believe it or not, some of those people may even be… parental units! Nearly half (45%) of parents play computer and video games with their children at least![]()
