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It can be seen that 49% of the average gamer is between 18-49 years. This includes people who started gaming when the video game industry was in its infant state and some gamers consist of the people who started playing games in its latest developments. The surprising factor is the high proportion of gamers who are above 49 years of age.

Gender Classification:

The gaming community has been stereotypically been male-centric. The ratio of male gamers to that of female gamers has always been high. In the earlier stages, female gamers did not consist of a major part of the total gaming population. This can be attributed to the concept of 'Gamer Shame' which can be found among women (ESA, 2005). This was one of the main reasons of the proportion of female gamers being less. But in recent times, this has changed to a great extent. The proportion of women gamers has increased from 14% in 1987 to 31 % in 2005 to 40% in 2008. The proportions of women gamers have increased by leaps and bounds and as a result games designed for all genders have gained momentum (Crandall, & Sidak, 2005). The increase in the percentage of female gamers can be better understood by a graphical presentation.

This rising proportion of female gamers gave rise to several games like Nancy Drew series, Ms PAC-MAN, Princess Isabella series, Tomb Raider: Lara Croft series where women are the leading characters of the game and which are specially designed for targeting women audiences have rose in the last couple of years.

On the other hand, it has been observed that online gaming has become more popular among the female gamers and that has lead to an increase in the number of females playing online games. It has been noted that female comprise of 43% of the total online gamers (ESA, 2009).

Financial Developments in the Field of Video Games

As jack Kyser, the chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. has put it, 'The video game sector is no longer an interesting little industry, it's serious money.' The video game industry has evolved into a financial juggernaut that has made huge developments in the financial sector. The video game software market in US alone has increased from $2.6 billion in 1996, to $5.6 billion in 2000, to $9.5 billion to a staggering $11.7 billion in the fiscal year 2008 (ESA, 2009). The total sales in the US markets can be better understood from the following table.

As seen in the figure, the US market for the entertainment software industry has been increasing greatly with the exception of 2005 where we saw a drop of 4% which can be attributed to less titles were released during 2005 and two major console makers Microsoft and Sony were waiting for 2006 to release their new consoles namely the XBOX 360 and the PlayStation respectively. Both the company had made the announcement of the development of these consoles which resulted into the customers holding back their purchase in anticipation of these consoles which also slowed down the sales of major titles that were released for the old console. As a resu本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。