Whereas once the primary audience for games was seen as male, aged 11-15, the gaming markets are expanding, due to a number of factors.
- More sophisticated graphics and more complex game play have attracted more mature audiences.
- Early gamers continue as gamers - those who were in the original audiences in the 1980s are older but continue to play.
- Industry growth has enabled increasing diversity of games, leading to broadening of audiences.
- Industry growth has meant that games are now cheaper to buy (although more expensive to produce) which again broadens the audience.
- Gaming is becoming culturally acceptable across many social groups.
- Online gaming has considerably expanded game appeal - for example, increasing female audiences, who are participating in traditionally 'male' games as well as more 'female' games such as simulations.
Comments on and criticisms of computer games:
- Game play can be competitive, co-operative or individualistic.
- Many games are violent. Others are to do with excelling in sport, completing dangerous missions to retrieve or collect things, or taking on the persona of a warrior or hero and employing strategy to win. Games use technology to represent reality or to embody fantasy. Critics argue they harden players to the task of murder by simulating the killing of hundreds or thousands of opponents in a single game. Grand Theft Auto 3 is criticised, for example, because players can choose to steal a car, pick up a prostitute, have (implied) sex with the prostitute, then kill her and steal her money.
- Tomb Raider was marketed through the visual construction of Lara Croft.
- Many critics have commented on the lack of 'female' games.
- Critics also observe how few original games are produced, since so many games are spin-offs from films.
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