Dad, put down the joystick and back away slowly:
Games and Age
In the past, video games have often been constructed as the province of children. Today, as an all-ages phenomenon, they have begun to enter the social mainstream. Academics now seriously discuss whether video games are art (Zimmerman, 2001) or educational (Gee, 2003), museums dedicate space to the cultural impact of games (Slovin, 2001), games have their own cable channel (G4), partisans argue that gamers are athletes (Baimbridge, 2002), and major universities are opening up programs in their creation and interpretation (Preston, 2000; Toyama, 2001). Is this adoption the result of our culture’s slow and steady acceptance of gaming technology, or simply the result of an aging user base? Changes in attitudes can be the result of one particular generation (a cohort effect), the aging process (an age effect) or circumstances particular to a unique moment in time (a period effect) (Glenn, 1977). The evidence suggests that there were both cohort and age effects at work over the last quarter-century. Today, youths continue to adopt game technology, even as the average age of players rises steadily. One cohort effect is relatively easy to isolate: consistent with research on the generational stability of partisan attitudes (Jennings & Niemi, 1981), the generations that initially ignored video games in the late 1970s and early 1980s have generally continued to stay away.
The question remains of whether children who play still grow up to be adults who play. One reason to doubt this is that the culture of games still caters primarily to adolescents. Many adults complain that games do not address to their grown-up interests and capabilities (Kushner, 2001; Russo, 2001). Without having panel data for the years since the advent of video game technology, it is impossible to establish whether the increasing trends in game use and an increasing age of game players are the results of pure cohort or age effects. Most likely, they are a combination of the two.
Age: Use and Opinion Data
Cohort and age effects are both evident. The initial game boom from 1977 to 1982 was both an adolescent and adult phenomenon, and the aesthetic of games permeated not just arcades, but adult movies, fashion, television, technology, music, and media. At their first peak, video games were a worldwide all-ages phenomenon: in 1982, 250,000,000 games of Pac-man were played worldwide (Burnham, 2001). But by 1984, the adult cohort had dramatically decreased its play, probably because of the powerful social messages its members were getting about the deviancy of adult gaming. As this section will illustrate, adult gamers began to be described as deviant and ashamed of their play in stories. In 1982, 31% of adults said they found games generally enjoyable.1 In 1991, that figure had dropped to 24%. But by the late 1980s, another cohort came of age; the adolescents of the initial game boom had become adults, and adult play began to rise (see Figure A).
 Figure A. Percentage of adults playing home video games, 1989-1998. Source: Roper data archive.
Opinion data, however, show that the Generation X cohort that continued to play games into adulthood did in fact experience changes in attitude. Even while they have continued to play, they have become more critical of games at the time when they entered their main child-rearing years. A Harris Interactive poll asked “Do video games contribute a lot towards violence in society?” The general population answer in 1994 was 38% “yes,” but in 1999 and 2001, the level had climbed to 47%. This indicates that play may have continued as a cohort effect, but that attitudes were subject to changes with age. Breaking the answers down further, the age effect becomes more apparent still (see Table 1). Those members of Generation X who were 10-15 years old in 1980 were in their early 30s, and their answers had begun to differ from new cohorts of adolescents. It remains to be seen if the Generation X group will continue to follow their parents attitudinally as they age. There is evidence to suggest that aging cohorts may adopt games (Copier, 2002).
Table 1
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Age Effects in Attitudes Towards Games, 1998
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“Do video games contribute a lot towards violence in society?”
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Age range
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% agreeing with statement
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18-24
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24
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25-29
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40
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30-39
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39
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40-49
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48
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50-59
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60
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65+
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66
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Report Title: Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1998, Issued By: Bureau of Justice Statistics
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