Earnest, a technology company that analyzes data pulled from loan applications, surveys, and/or publicly available data sources released their finding on the demographics of video game consumers. In this case, they pulled their data from student loan refinancing applications. Data sets on video games usages and gamers are relatively rare so I figured I’d examine their findings and share. Despite the less than ideal data source, let’s examine what their key findings were:
Key Takeaway
- Younger people, especially those aged 18-24, are more likely to make video game-related purchases than older individuals.
- Men are more than three times as likely to make gaming purchases than women.
- Individuals with high school diplomas or Associate degrees are the most likely to make gaming purchases, while dentists are the least likely.
- People making more than $90,000 are less likely to make gaming purchases than their lower-earning counterparts.
- People are less likely to make video game purchases the more time has elapsed since they graduated from their highest degree program.
There’s some interesting findings here, some of which reinforce or challenge the Electronic Software Associations. The disparity between male and female game purchasers is significantly higher than the findings of ESA, who found that men are the purchasers of video games about 63% of the time (compared to 37% for females). Likewise, the finding that 18-24 years are the ones most likely to make gaming purchases conflicts with finding that the average purchaser of video game content is 36 years old.
This graph I find particularly interesting, because it exemplifies how video games as a medium is a relatively universally participated one. You see some minor dips, especially as income increases, but for the most part there isn’t a huge difference across income levels. As the report points out, some of this may also be tied to age and profession; as one earns more they are often more set in their careers, older, and perhaps have less time for video games.
I’d be interested to see survey myself and to get a little more information about sample size and general demographics of respondents, but this report does provide an interesting perspective that we may not get in other large scale data sets. You can check out the entire report here: https://www.earnest.com/blog/the-demographics-of-video-gaming/
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The Sociology of Videogames 
This is really interesting despite, as you say, the data source being less than perfect. I can understand how age and income can potentially be tied to fewer gaming expenses. There’s one question which hasn’t been answered though… what is it that dentists have against gaming? 🤔