Video Games Are Going Gray to Keep Growing

The video game business grew into a more than $11-billion industry by churning out teenager-friendly shoot-’em-up diversions like “Halo” and “Grand Theft Auto.”

To keep growing, video game makers will have to reach out to older players like Ned Jordan.

The 37-year-old computer programming consultant from Woodland Hills has been a gamer since his teen-age years in the 1980s. Twenty years later, he plays video games 10 to 20 hours a week.

“I’m not the kind of person who can just sit on the sofa and watch TV,” Jordan said.

Males in their teens are still the mainstay of the industry, which gathers in Los Angeles this week for its annual Electronic Entertainment Expo. The 17-and-under crowd currently is responsible for about 59% of the sales of games for consoles in this country, according to the market research firm NPD Group.

The challenge for the industry is finding a way to keep these gamers in the fold as they enter their 30s -- even their 40s -- and find themselves saddled with greater responsibilities and less free time.

“You can have new players coming in all the time, but if you are losing the older players, you’re just treading water,” said David Swofford of NCsoft Corp., which specializes in online games that allow players to compete with one another. “We spend a lot of money on keeping them happy. Otherwise, we don’t have growth.”

Those efforts may be paying off. Revenues at NCsoft rose 13.8% last year to $143 million.

At Electronic Arts Inc., the largest U.S. video game maker, fully 25% of non-sports titles are purchased by gamers over the age of 35. Those games skew older because they have “relatively deep and complex plotlines compared to the sports games,” according to EA spokesman Jeff Brown.

“Once you get into games, you stay with it,” said Frank Gibeau, president of marketing for the Redwood City, Calif., company. “You give up other things if you like games -- you give up TV, you give up reading, maybe.”

Sony Corp., maker of the top-selling PlayStation 2 game console, says that 12% of its buyers are 36 or older, and 22% are in the 26-to-35 age bracket.

Back in 1985, when the landmark Nintendo Entertainment System hit stores in the U.S. and launched the modern era of video games, it was hard to imagine there would be a significant number of players in their 20s, let alone in their 30s and beyond.

“When I was in my early 20s, it was socially unacceptable to be playing video games. My parents thought I was a complete moron,” said Michael Pachter, 48, an analyst who follows game companies for Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles.

“Now the socially acceptable age for gamers is about 6 to 40,” he said. “That bottom age of 6 stays steady, because that’s how old you need to be to have the ability to control a game well. But in another 20 years, the upper age will be 60.”

Electronic Arts is researching ways to hang on to its customers as they age. Gibeau wouldn’t disclose any of the company’s findings, but allowed that one way EA kept gamers hooked was by releasing new versions of franchise titles like “Madden NFL Football” year after year.

At NCsoft, based in Seoul, new elements are added to its online games “almost daily” in order to give veteran players a reason to keep playing, Swofford said.

“Sometimes it’s maybe just a new weapon or creature,” he said. “Other times it might be a whole new landscape.”

It’s those kinds of improvements that keep 38-year-old Gary Kearney in front of his trio of game consoles: a PlayStation 2, an Xbox from Microsoft Corp. and a GameCube from Nintendo Co.

“It’s why I keep buying new games -- to see the next level of what they will be able to do,” said Kearney, a software developer for Tecolote Research, a Santa Barbara firm that conducts financial analysis for government clients.

Some video game developers are plotting new tactics aimed at older gamers.

Insomniac Games Inc. of Burbank is hoping to capture the over-30 market by focusing on the under-10 crowd.

Chief Executive Ted Price made his name by creating Spyro, a spunky purple dragon who fights the forces of evil. For his latest series, Ratchet & Clank, Price augmented a basic plot about a problem-solving alien and his robot sidekick by poking fun at music videos, slacker stereotypes and news reporters in the hopes of creating a game that parents would want to play with their kids.

Ratchet “is still a cartoon character, but with big guns and humor that has a little more social commentary,” said Price, a 35-year-old father who plays video games with his two young daughters. “The older audience wants a story and characters to care about.”

There are some side effects of aging that game designers can do little about.

“I can’t click as fast as I used to,” said Dickson Liu, 35, of Arcadia, who was recently laid off from his job as an electronics parts buyer and plays games for as many as 10 hours a week. “To play these games you have to have great reflexes, and sometimes I can’t keep up. The young guys, they say, ‘You are old, you are too slow.’ ”