Did Adults Play Sega and Nintendo?

I knew one gamer in my family that was an adult, and that was one of my aunts. She was pretty hardcore. Outside of that, though, I don't think I knew anyone in real life that did that. I'd read letters to Nintendo Power, though, from folks that were quite old, and it was pretty impressive.

My parents didn't play games at all. I think my Dad might have picked up a controller twice.

After the video game crash of '83, Nintendo practically single-highhandedly resurrected the industry in the home market sector. Part of their strategy to do so, was to market the NES and its peripherals as "toys" rather than just video games. Nintendo actively sought a younger demographic (for multiple reasons that would digress to a unique topic). This strategy worked, but it set a cultural and financial precedent that persisted all through the '80s and '90s. That precedent being that video games were for kids. (Notice I said video games, not computer games. Computer games were never stigmatized the same way; computer gaming has remained "adult sanctioned" since its inception, but that's another topic.) Nintendo's strategy of re-branding video games as kid's toys was financially successful, as a result other manufacturers followed this same precedent in the west (SEGA, Atari, NEC).

Because of the fallout associated with this campaign to rebrand video games as kid's stuff, there was considerable stigma associated for adults who might indulge in the medium. In TV shows and movies, video games were derided for years (and years) as childlike playthings, often the butt of condescending jokes. As such seeing grownups play video games wasn't something I personally witnessed often. I'm struggling to recall any adults in my childhood who owned consoles and routinely played video games. The cultural pressure was just so strong at deriding any adult who played video games as being immature and small minded. So the adults that did do this (who were in my childhood life) must have done so incognito.

This stigma eventually became an obvious negative for video game companies, as they came to realize the larger demographic that could be captured if it were reversed. Throughout the nineties, advertising appeared in increasing regularity which attempted to appeal to adults. But it wasn't until Sony came onto the scene with their PlayStation brand, that "okay video games are for adults too" became a real seachange. At my age (40) I still don't know many peers in real life who play video games regularly. Guys I know in real life my age are about; fishing, hunting, golfing, sport shooting, watching football, the typical "manly" hobbies. I'm hoping my generation (gen X) will be the last generation that looks down on adults who enjoy this medium. Hopefully millennials and forward gens will accept video games as sanctified all-ages entertainment.

Springing off of what Ex said, I think Sony coming along and appealing to adults absolutely was tied to the fact that the demographic that had grown up playing games were basically becoming adults, so gaming needed to "grow up" along with them. And like 20thcenturygamer, I sometimes miss the innocence of the older generation. Sure, there was a lot of junk, but games definitely didn't feel quite as focus-tested as they often are now. The Wild West of gaming was both a boon and a curse.

This makes sense, as Rob the Robot was a Trojan horse to get kids to ask their parents for a Nintendo and to get stores to actually stock them on their shelves.

This is also consistent with my observations about PC gaming growing up. There was a stark difference between console offerings like Sonic and Mario and PC titles like Duke Nukem and Carmageddon. In the 90's my Dad's coworkers who were in their 20's and 30's would talk about how badass these games were. But I never heard them express any interest in Super Mario 3.



I also noticed adults would chide gaming like it had the nutritional value of cotton candy. I think I would hear my mom say, "You'll kill your brain cells playing that thing." at least once or twice. Also in his channel CGQ+, Chris Alaimo commented in one of his videos that gaming wasn't considered to be very cool in the 80's and 90's. The implication seemed to be that you wouldn't flaunt it as something you enjoyed. Whereas today it had become more socially acceptable.


I can't help but wonder whether this was a tactic to profit from an unexplored demographic (like how non-gamers all ran out and bought Wiis) or whether it had more to do with the natural aging of the population. In the 80's video games were a pretty radical new concept, so I can hypothesize at least some parents' protective urges and aversion to change would lead to dismissive attitudes toward the practice ("You'll kill your brain cells!"). But now the kids who grew up playing Nintendo and Sega are old enough to have careers and mortgages and kids of their own, so we no longer see it some alien technology intruding on the natural order of things. The target age brackets of NES, Sega Genesis, and Playstation seem to roughly correlate with how these demographics would age with the passage of time anyway.