VIDEO GAMES Players span THE AGES

Many older gamers play electronic card or puzzle games online.
By ANDRE MOUCHARD
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
They blow up tanks, blast aliens, escape haunted mansions.
They play bridge online, swipe imaginary cars and tackle "Freecell" when phone calls grow tedious.
They're electronic gamers. And increasingly, they answer to names like Grandpa and Grandma.
Older gamers -- defined as people 50 and up -- are the new big thing in electronic games, the fastest-growing group of gamers, according to a recent study. Although it's no secret that gamers have been aging as electronic diversions have morphed from fad to mainstream to ubiquitous, the rise of the 50-and-up gamer crowd could change the way we think about everything from growing old to computers to the nature of play itself.
"Everybody talks about the 18- to 24-year-old male [playing games in which they're] blowing things up, but that's not the growth," explained Stephen Killeen, chief executive at WorldWinner.com, a Newton, Mass.-based company that runs online game rooms for people who like to compete at solitaire and bridge.
"For us, it's people with time on their hands who play games on the Web."
Killeen, who previously helped run Lycos, said about 20 percent of his company's 9 million customers are 50 or older. "It's a great audience to have."
It's also not a niche. The 50-and-up crowd now accounts for 17 percent of the gaming market, up from 13 percent in 2000, according to statistics issued late last year by the Entertainment Software Association.
What they play
Most of those older gamers stick with electronic versions of cards or puzzle games. But the report found that a significant number also play character-based role-playing games, racing and driving games, and war simulations.
The biggest market for computer games remains guys 14 to 24. But the average age of all gamers -- 29 -- indicates an audience that is more diverse and much older.
Before 2000, few in the industry tracked older gamers in the mistaken belief that they didn't exist in large enough numbers to care about. Now, according to Killeen and others, game makers look at older gamers as a vibrant market, particularly for niche products such as electronic versions of mah-jongg, chess and dominoes.
"Games are very social activities. And the technology, of course, is ubiquitous. So, on that level, it's not really a surprise that there are older gamers," said Carolyn Rauch, senior vice president for The Electronic Software Association.
Online connection
A key to the older-gamer trend is the Internet. In recent years, online gaming has grown wildly popular, with dozens of sites and companies providing access to people who play in group settings. Often, the games played online are electronic versions of old standards, such as bridge or hearts or even solitaire. The result is an electronic parlor. Instead of sitting and playing at the same table in the same room, players sit and play at computers time zones or even continents apart.
"People from all over the world connect to us. And it's a community in a very real sense," Killeen said. "Instead of geography, our communities are defined by a shared interest -- the game."
At WorldWinner, most tournaments include a postgame chance to chat with other competitors. Killeen says older gamers are most inclined to check into these chat areas and sometimes form friendships that go beyond their shared interest in a particular game.
"I've heard of people who wind up having dinner together, or who visit from long distance. Virtual communities become real communities."
Learning from young
Like cell phones and other recent technologies, the learning path for computer games tends to travel up, from the young to the old.
Linda Scheck, 62, of Newport Beach, Calif., plays computer games with her granddaughter, Sydney Penticuff, age 3.
"She sits in my lap and we play," Scheck said, adding: "I don't really play games, other than those."
People who study computer use say grandparents' learning to use computer games with or from grandkids is fairly common. Experts say there are social and even cognitive reasons for that.
"The reactions of children and older people to the computer are quite similar," said Alladi Vankatesh, a professor of management at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied how Americans use computers.
"[Both] groups try to explore and test the limits of computation. Both are curious about their environment. Both try to mystify and demystify their environment at the same time. Video games are great for that."
Both groups also have discretionary time at their disposal, a factor that Vankatesh points to as critical when it comes to electronic game-playing.