You might not call yourself a "gamer," but chances are you fit that profile if you're an adult living in the United States.
According to data gathered in a new report published by the Entertainment Software Association, an industry trade group, 65 percent of American adults are spending some amount of time playing video games of one type or another. That means there's a gamer living in 75 percent of U.S. households. It's a bit of an incomplete picture, however, since the report doesn't get into household size or average number of hours played -- or what the metric for game player even is.
The ESA employed the market research firm Ipsos to put together the report, and we're only seeing some of the data (there's a more thorough version available to ESA members). It's based on information gathered from more than 4,000 Americans about their "video-game playing habits and attitudes."
None of what's revealed is particularly surprising if you've been paying any attention to gaming culture over the past decade or two. But if you hang onto the old stereotype of gamers being basement-dwelling troglodytes who all live with their mothers and hate the outdoors, well ... welcome to the present.
The most interesting stats in the report relate to how those who play games associate with politics. The average age of adult gamers in the U.S. is 33 -- well above voting age -- and 59 percent are "certain" about their plans to vote in the 2020 presidential election. For comparison, more than 47 percent of U.S. voters participated in the 2018 midterms and more than 61 percent cast a vote in the 2016 presidential race.
The party affiliations don't exactly line up with how they break down across all Americans, however. Rasmussen noted in mid-2018 that 40 percent of voters "in all party registration states" are Democrats, 29 percent are Republicans, and 28 percent are Independents. Gallup, it's worth noting, puts that same split at 26 percent Democrats, 27 percent Republicans, and 44 percent Independents as of April 2019. That's the nature of polling, so take these numbers with a grain of salt.
According to the ESA report, 37 percent of gamers are Democrats, 33 percent are Republicans, 18 percent are Independents, and 12 percent are "other." (It's not clear what "other" means, but presumably at least some of those respondents opted out of declaring a party affiliation.)
As you can see, the two main party affiliations represent a greater overall share of gamers compared to national numbers from Rasmussen or Gallup, but be careful about how you interpret it. The biggest news stories about the industry tend to focus on progressive issues like worker's rights and inclusiveness, but that doesn't necessarily reflect the views of every gamer. It's more helpful here to consider the big picture.
Recent national data suggests that while the total number of registered Republicans is shrinking -- a fact that many attribute to Donald Trump's divisive presidency -- those who consciously remain in the Republican fold continue to be strong supporters of the current administration. Even those who don't necessarily care for Trump himself are still aligned with their party.
I'm going to say it one more time for the people in the back: It's important to remember that polling data like this isn't gospel. Ipsos worked with an admittedly decent-sized sample of more than 4,000 respondents and then extrapolated that data out to represent the sum total of U.S. adults. So there's an awful lot of guesswork going on here (as there is in any research poll).
Still, for people who are really into video games and who tend to live large portions of their life on social media, it can be easy to get stuck in a bubble in which it feels like the views held by you and your friends are the dominant beliefs. This report, then, amounts to a reality check: It's a big world out there, and it's populated with a more varied set of perspectives than you might think. The ESA report's numbers aren't far off from national polling data because gamers are all of us; it's a hobby that appeals to a broad cross-section of U.S. adults.
The ESA represents the interests of the video game industry, and this report was created primarily to benefit its membership -- which includes most major publishers. There's a common misconception that the ESA also represents consumers, but that's not quite accurate. It does oversee the consumer-facing Entertainment Software Ratings Board and it's responsible for putting together the annual E3 trade show, which now includes a public component. But it also performs lobbying work at both the federal and state levels on behalf of the industry.
There's a bunch of other information in the report about gamer interests, age group breakdowns, gender breakdowns, and more. You can read it right here.
When I asked the ESA why there's no information on racial demographics in the report, I was told that the data exists, but it was only included in a version of the report given exclusively to ESA members. So while this public report is certainly thorough, it doesn't represent every shred of data collected.
