Teens Gaming Less?

These results don't surprise me.

the dedicated gamer is not longer in his teens and he is more discerning when he buys a game.

the quality of games has certainly declined greatly in the past 3 years.

modern teens no longer find it "cool" to be a gamer.

becuz we are too picky nowadays.

remember when just shooting a dot at a pixel was exciting?

now nothing appeases me in gaming. i wish my standards were lower :(

teens are too busy blogging on myspace

An interesting question. I definitley noticed it, a friend of mine who graduated highschool early (he's in my college chem class) doesn't seem interested in games anymore, and he's short, asian, wears glasses, isn't athletic, and likes computers.
Now that I think about it game quality may be a problem. I thought it was just me, but all my friends are playing less games too. The only games I play right now are Counterstrike Source and Oblivion. I didn't buy a single game for the christmas season because nothing looked interesting. "Civilization 4", :Perfect Dark 2". Cmon gaming industry, the reason sales are going down is because your turning crap. I can only think of 1 game that I still sorta enjoy playing from last year (BF 2). Thank God Oblivion is so good.

I find myself playing old standbys really. I load up Thief 1/2/3 user missions more than anything.

CoD2 wasn't bad and Red Orchestra is fun but Oblivion is the first new game i have played in a long time that I actually enjoy. WoW doesn't count because when I played it it was compulsive, I honestly didn't really enjoy playing past level 45 or so but I stuck it out till 60 and then played another month *shudder*

OMG won't anyone think of the piracy! Sales were down due to piracy, remember?!

Anyone else think that the survey may not represent an *ACTUAL* decrease in time playing videogames, but merely a reflection of what society considers "cool/normal/healthy"?

For instance, if you did a survey that asked "Do you plan on exercising more/less this year?", I'm sure you'd get much more "more's" than "less's", even though they should be equally distributed if everyone answered completely honestly.

I don't know; I'm tempted to say it's the quality of the game.

When a Resident Evil 4 comes out, it dominates my weekends for a while, so I'm still up for serious gaming - but more and more, I find myself playing games that are 5 years old, like Thief 2 or Deus Ex.

Most of the gaming I do on PC is actually fanmissions for the Thief series; mainstream releases (with the exception of the upcoming Sin and Bioshock) just haven't been that interesting lately.

Well... yeah... maybe

There's still a lot of good games for the PS2, and still some coming out, though.

needs more games with blood and naked boobies. thats what sells. and we need more games with the word "fuck" in it alot, that is great too, kids love that stuff! lets make games with holiwood budgets and holiwood voice actors that emulate movies and television shows and rap songs. thats the ticket there folks, lets make games just like movies except you press buttons to go to the next scene instead of sitting there!

I thought I was the only one not gaming as much. It seemed like everybody else was playing even more. My little game collection does me right.

The days where I can just sit and play games for hours on end are long gone, my friends. Life is too busy, between my work and my wife and my two-year-old son.

I don't have the time to sit and play a game that takes hours to get into (most RPGs), requires intricate knowledge of complicated areas (Metroid Prime 2), or requires a plethora of buttons in difficult combinations at the exact right times (Ninja Gaiden). A game with a steep learning curve is a game I don't play much.

The games that I find myself playing most often are simple, fun games that I can put down when I must, and just pick up where I left off with little or no re-learning curve.

I notice that some of the posters here don't realize that they aren't teens anymore. This sudy was on teens, not former teens. I'm 19 so i'm almost out of this catagory. The reason however, for this decline will probably never be known, so we should all just shutup. It could be just a down year. Worse games. Teens tastes are terrible for some reason right now. People are always complaing about lack of innovation or whatever yet they refuse to play anything, but there comfurt food. Oh well. These stories just depress me anyways.

also, retro games are cool with the teens right now, its cool to player Super Mario Bros. than God of War for example.

It also has to do with less innovation in the majority of game systems and the tremendously increased cost of entry. Back in the day gaming consoles and computer gaming rigs were certainly expensive on the outset, but you were able to get many many years off a system. The one exception might be the occassional video card upgrade, but those were relatively cheap propositions.

These days a high end video card costs close to double the processor and these next generation consoles like the X-box cost several hundred dollars.

You can, however, look at the Nintendo DS's success and see why it is successful because it bucks most of the trends of the rest of the industry:

It's comparatively cheap, and so are its games.
It has access to a huge gaming library
The newer games tend to be far more innovative or different from the usual fair

If the industry really wants to see sales revitalize in the teen sector they are going to need to have a wider selection of innovative/non-standard approach games and above all else they need to reel their costs in to a more acceptable level.

Sure, most of the people in our generation can afford this stuff if we really want to. A lot of us have grown up, are in the workforce, making some ok money, etc. But the teen/college group of kids are as cash strapped as always. So they are looking for something that really stands out that they can readily afford, and the industry really doesn't provide that much anymore.

The biz is releasing to many games. Already up in ~350 this year. That is alot of games, alot of shitty games to be honest, alot of games just made to make money, like the Far Cry Instincts-series... That's the problem and probably a generation-shift...

I want to know who these kids are because I'm 21 and I've been gaming heavily since I was like... 8.

My brother is 18 and he's been the same way since about the same age.

My two kid cousins are 8 and 4 and they play their PS2 like it's going out of style. My other once-removed cousins, one is 19, the other is 16, are really into their XBox.

What they need is better graphic, clearly.

I wonder how much of the "generational transition" cited by publishers at each shift actually equates to new next-gen gameplay pulling people back into gaming, rather than making them wait and save up their money like good little consumers. The impression I get is that the major players (Nintendo aside) believe much more strongly in the latter, but perhaps more than reality justifies?

I'd also agree with others here who point to the increased cost of entry. As the mainstream demographic has aged from teens to 20 somethings, with correspondingly more cash floating around, it certainly seems economically plausible that prices would increase.

The early signs from the Xbox 360 (high priced accessories, etc) also suggest that the costs of the fierce fight between Sony and Microsoft will be borne by us, the customers. It feels kinda counter-intuitive to the principle that competition should benefit the customer, but at the end of the day, we'll be the ones paying back the huge costs Sony and MS have run up in their "mine's bigger than yours" R&D/marketing battle.

The technology is maturing and evolving more slowly. So there is a smaller difference between a new game and a 2-year old game. So we tend to buy fewer games.

The "I've seen that/done that before"-feeling doesn't necessarily have to do with the industry producing more sequels than it used too. It may have to do with the gameplay and graphics not evolving as fast as it used too. And the industry is bound by the tech trends and cannot easily set them aside.

How can this be? With all the sequels and other cutting-edge content that the suits say is good? And don't get me started on the "HD ERA"....how can these kids resist?

Good for them. Get outside.

Kids waiting on holodeck.



And unlike web browsing, watching tv or a film you can't do more than one task and also play games at the same time. Most games require your complete and total attention at all times.

It's hard for me to remember what the Shack was like in the days before Remo.

If I recall correctly, it was pretty much just gone gold press releases and links to game reviews on other websites. Now it's thought-provoking, analytical discourse on every aspect of our shared hobby of choice. Bravo!

So video games are down and sex, drinking and drug usage are up. Amirite?

Does anyone feel this was as prevalent during the last console shift? I really didn't pay any attention to the sales/public-interest aspect of things when the PS2 came around...

I blame myspace.