In the past, video games were played mostly by teenage boys and men using physical copies on home PCs or consoles like Nintendo. Games were single-player only unless others were present. Today, the average gamer is 35 and half of gamers play multiplayer games weekly on various devices like smartphones. Popular games include League of Legends with 67 million monthly players. In the future, gaming audiences will become more diverse in both gender and age as games are increasingly accessed through mobile devices and multi-platform downloads. Most games will be available digitally across all devices and interactive multiplayer games will grow in popularity, providing new income sources for gaming companies.

1. Past
Who plays games?
Men and teenage boys tended to play
games, they were interested in technology
and had more time to use the computer.
How did people play games?
No internet so therefore games were not
downloadable easily onto computers.
Games were physical products that were
bought in a similar ways to DVDs.
They were on a floppy disk or PC Rom that
could be used on a home PC. An example of
this would be:
What sort of games did people play?
People played usually single player games,
unless with someone else where they could
select a multi-player games. There was no
interaction with anyone outside of the same
location.
Institutions that produced these games
were: Nintendo, Sega and Sony.
Present
Who plays games?
Today, the average age of a gamer
is 35, there are additionally twice
as many female gamers (33%)
under the age of 18 than there
are young male gamers under the
age of 18 (15%).
How do people play games?
56% of people stated that they
frequently play games with others
and 54% play multiplayer games a
week.
Additionally the amount of
people using their mobile phones
is huge, 960 million gamers play
on their smartphones which is the
population of north and south
America combined.
What sort of games do people
play?
67 million people play league of
legends monthly.
42% of Americans play video
games for at least 3 hours per
week.
Future
Who plays games?
Games will continue to reach both males
and females.
The age range for these products will
continue to grow especially when more
games and content can be accessed
through mobile devices and other similar
platforms. A more diverse audience will
access games, resulting in the age of the
audience to increase especially
upwards.
How will people play games?
The vast majority of games will be
produced in a format where they can be
accessed and played on every device.
Less physical copies of the games will be
sold in shops and through digital retailers
as content will be available to purchase
through download on the gaming device.
What sort of games will people play?
Interactive games with people all across
the world.
Games with additional downloadable
content such as Call of Duty will become
more popular with more people
spending money using this method. This
will provide a greater source of income
for institutions.
The Games Industry- Past, Present and Future