Trigger Happy
videogames were indeed mainly a children’s pursuit, but now games cost between twenty and fifty dollars and are targeted at the disposable income of adults. The average age of videogame players is now estimated to be twenty-eight in the United States; one 2000 survey reported that 61 percent of all U.S. videogamers are eighteen and over, with a full 42 percent of computer gameplayers and 21 percent of console gameplayers thirty-six years of age or older.1 More and more grownups choose to play videogames rather than watch TV or go to the movies. According to the European Leisure Software Publishers’ Association, the British videogame market already grosses 60 percent more than total movie box-office receipts, and 80 percent more than video rentals. On the other side of the Atlantic, Americans named videogames as their favorite form of home entertainment for the third year in a row in 1999. Twice as many people nominated videogames as chose watching TV, three times as many preferred videogames to going out to the movies or reading books, and six times as many preferred videogames to
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1 According to figures published in the Interactive Digital Software Association’s fifth annual Video and PC Game Industry Trends Survey, 2000.
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