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Kent Neveu is the subject of an upcoming documentary, \u201cInfinite Lives,\u201d produced by his son, Brett Neveu. Photo by Unfurnished Films<\/p>\nOn Nov. 11, 2011, millions of people discovered a whole new world.<\/p>\n
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a fantasy role-playing game, or RPG, years in the making from videogame maker Bethesda Studios, had just hit shelves. Within two days, 3.4 million people were exploring the snowcapped mountains in the fictional land of Skyrim, crawling through its deepest dungeons, forging alliances with warring factions and slaying dragons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kent Neveu was among the many gamers who became obsessed with Bethesda\u2019s now-seminal RPG and its signature blend of freeform exploration and roleplaying. But not many can say they hit the roads of Skyrim when they were pushing 70.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGosh, when I fired that thing up, I could not even believe my eyes,\u201d said Neveu, who has been playing games since the 1970s and 1980s when Pac-Man, the classic 2D maze game,\u00a0 was considered cutting edge. \u201cThe game changed everything for me. It\u2019s still the best game I\u2019ve ever played.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fourteen years later, Neveu, now 83, is still playing Skyrim, along with any video game he can get his hands on. For the games industry, which has long portrayed and marketed itself to younger audiences, Neveu\u2019s story stands out, but it turns out his is far from an anomaly.<\/p>\n
According to the Entertainment Software Association, there are 57 million gamers over 50 years old in the U.S., outnumbering gamers under the age of 18, accounting for 38% of all gamers globally and 56% of gamers in the U.S. alone. And those numbers are growing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Faced with a crisis caused by ballooning budgets, the come-down from a pandemic-era boom, mass layoffs in the games industry and changing player habits that see gamers spending money and time on fewer games, the games industry needs a lifeline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kent Neveu is the subject of an upcoming documentary, \u201cInfinite Lives,\u201d produced by his son, Brett Neveu. Photo by Unfurnished Films<\/p>\n
A 75-year-old headset-sporting Call of Duty player might be the ticket. Although they still largely sit on the outside looking in, older gamers, who have both time and money on their hands, could help save the games industry, as long as the industry is willing to reach them.<\/p>\n
At a time when younger gamers are spending less money on fewer free-to-play games<\/a>, a focus on older gamers potentially unlocks an untapped audience that still plays, and pays for, the kind of full-price games that have traditionally been a moneymaker for the industry, according to Bob De Schutter<\/a>, a professor of game design at Northeastern University and a core member of Northeastern\u2019s interdisciplinary research initiative, Games for Life.<\/p>\n Older gamers recently accounted for $2.5 billion in biannual spending on games, according to a 2023 report from AARP,<\/a> the nonprofit interest group for those ages 50 and older. That\u2019s a small piece of the pie in an industry that brought in close to $200 billion in 2025, but one that the industry needs to cultivate if it wants to continue growing, De Schutter explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never been thinking about them as our core user base,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s an industry shift that needs to happen there.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the industry, getting more people to play games also stands to benefit older adults\u2019 mental and physical health.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should have never bought into the [idea that] you\u2019re an adult and now you\u2019re serious and you shouldn\u2019t play anymore,\u201d said Leanne Chukoskie, an associate professor of physical therapy, movement and rehabilitation science at Northeastern and member of Games for Life. \u201cThose people who have held onto it have a lot of mental wellbeing benefits, and those exist in games, too. It\u2019s not just because of the speed of processing as an aspect of cognition, for example. It\u2019s just a way to connect with people, a way to relax.\u201d<\/p>\n But to really allow older gamers into the fold will require developers to understand who older gamers are, what games they play and, perhaps most importantly, why they play games.<\/p>\n A reason to play<\/p>\n In a lot of ways, older gamers are fairly similar to younger gamers in that the reasons they flock to their favorite games are far from universal. That said, there are patterns that industry analysts have started to clock.<\/p>\n While 83% of Gen-Alpha and 78% of Gen-Z play video games every day, 50-plus gamers are no slouches: 45% play games every day, according to the AARP report. Similar to the general population, older gamers are largely playing mobile games on their phones.<\/p>\n AARP also found that while older adults are playing games for fun just like their younger counterparts, 78% also cite the need to stay mentally sharp as a major reason for playing. It may help explain why puzzle games, which have been associated with mental acuity<\/a>, are the most popular genre among older gamers.\u00a0<\/p>\n But they are far from the only kinds of games that older adults are playing.<\/p>\n Kate Edwards, 60, a game developer with more than 30 years of experience working on major franchises like Halo, Call of Duty and Mass Effect, still plays fast-paced first-person shooters like Halo. She is far from the only developer to stick with mainstream games like this, she said.<\/p>\n Her reflexes are not on par with what they used to be, she said, but she finds these high-intensity experiences help maintain her hand-eye coordination and focus.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many variables you need to be managing at the same time, which I think is a more full spectrum activation of what you\u2019re thinking about compared to just passively viewing something,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n There are also plenty of older gamers who have long been invested in playing games for the immersion they provide.<\/p>\n Neveu\u2019s lifelong love for immersive stories started in the 1970s and 1980s when gaming on the Atari 2600 console became a way for him to bond with his then 7-year-old son. But he kept up his gaming streak well after his son left the house, through Doom, the landmark 1993 first-person shooter, Skyrim and even recent releases like 2025\u2019s acclaimed Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/a>.<\/p>\n Neveu\u2019s favorite games, like Skyrim, let him continue to be an explorer by immersing him in new worlds and experiences, he said, something he admitted is increasingly harder for him to do in the real world.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Skyrim, it wasn\u2019t like I was playing a game at all,\u201d Neveu said. \u201cIt was like I lived there. \u2026 I did go back to Skyrim recently just to look it over again. I had a house and a wife there. It was a busy house. It had kids.\u201d<\/p>\n A changing, aging industry<\/p>\n Even though older adults are continuing to play games, the industry producing those experiences is only just starting to understand them.<\/p>\n That shift is starting to happen not only because the people making games, like Edwards, are getting older themselves but also out of necessity for the industry, De Schutter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMore companies today are starting to realize that they have to appeal to the widest possible demographic because of the financials,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cWe are, for the most part, over the stereotype of the basement-dwelling teenage boy.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last decade, the industry has been investing more heavily in multiplayer games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, which became free-to-play platforms that encouraged gamers to stay invested for years and spend real-world money on costumes, cosmetic items and other content. The big-budget, full-price single-player games that drove innovation and profits of the biggest developers, including Skyrim, became rarer.<\/p>\n Developers came to rely increasingly on games with a longer shelf life, but that also meant gamers, particularly younger gamers, were spending more time and money on fewer games, De Schutter explained. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an unexpected windfall for the industry, as new people flocked to video games to keep busy during lockdown. As the world has returned to pre-pandemic norms, the industry is starting to buckle under the weight of bigger game budgets fostered by large pandemic-era investments that are not seeing returns in a more tepid economy<\/a>, De Schutter said.<\/p>\n In looking for areas of growth, industry leaders are starting to turn to older gamers as an audience that plays the kinds of single-player games that have been the industry\u2019s bread and butter for decades, Edwards noted.<\/p>\n Nintendo, at least in its marketing, has recognized this shift. Advertisements for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom portray adult commuters, not just children, playing the game. De Schutter said these are small but significant steps toward creating a wider acceptance of older gamers.<\/p>\n But the members of Games for Life recognize that the industry needs to do more than just change its marketing strategy. How developers design games, and the kinds of games they release, will have to change, too. In AARP\u2019s 2023 report, 69% of older gamers said they don\u2019t feel like games are designed with them in mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the games are super twitchy, really fast,\u201d Chukoskie said. \u201cIf you want to play, you\u2019ve got to have young reflexes. That actually creates this intrinsic bias in the field where we\u2019re designing for these young people who can play these games.\u201d<\/p>\n But some developers have proven that it doesn\u2019t need to be the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wargaming\u2019s World of Tanks, a first-person shooter game where players battle in tanks, has been \u201coverperforming with this demographic\u201d because it relies more on deliberate, tactical gameplay than twitch reflexes, De Schutter said.<\/p>\n Over the last five years, developers have also begun to center accessibility<\/a>, implementing customizable controls, text-to-speech tools and even color blind settings. But the conversation has largely revolved around people with disabilities and needs to expand to \u201cthe natural disability that comes with aging as far as our eyesight and coordination,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n