Half of UK population play games

Non-gamers are now in the minority as over half of everyone in the UK play video games, a new report has revealed.

The UK’s resident population is estimated at around 62m, and 32.9m of those say they play iPad, Android, PlayStation and Xbox games online.

The findings were published in a report called ‘Gaming Britain’ by the Internet Advertising Bureau.It also found that 82 per cent of internet users aged between eight and 65 years old play games, while most players fall into the 25 to 45 years old category.

49 per cent of gamers prefer to play puzzle and quiz games, as opposed to 23 per cent who favour first-person shooters.Plus, 51 per cent of online gamers are male and 49 per cent female.

This new research is fascinating because itblasts many people’s preconceptions about the game-playing audience out of the water,” said Jack Wallington, head of industry programmes for the Internet Advertising Bureau.

It categorically proves that while very few would consider themselves an avid gamer, in fact almost 33m people do play video games and do so frequently – including eight in ten adults aged 16 to 65 years old. This makes playing games far too mainstream an activity to be classified as a niche.

Over three quarters of players are now over the age of 24 years old and the male to female audience split is even. In fact, playing games is such an incredibly engrained behaviour within the UK that, contrary to the anti-social stereotype, games help build and maintain friendships and families.

Over seven in ten adults have played games socially with friends, family or people they’ve just met either in person or online, while parents are three times more likely than players without children to give ‘spending time with family’ as a reason for playing games.”