“More people are playing games than ever before in the United States,” Entertainment Software Association president Stanley Pierre-Louis tells me in an introduction I feel I’ve heard a few times before, admittedly for very good reason.
We’re speaking about The ESA’s Essential Facts report, an annual survey of the video game playing habits of 4,000 Americans.. The 2021 rendition has nearly 227 million Americans playing video games, up from 214 million in 2020. If you’re just counting adults over 18, the number is around 182 million and has also been steadily increasing, year after year.
In combing through the report each year and looking for trends, I’m consistently struck by how consistent the rest of the numbers seem to be. Roughly the same number of men play games as women (55% to 45%), a relatively even balance that’s held steady for years now. The age breakdown — 20% of players are under 18, seven percent over the age of 65, and the average age of 31 — is also about the same as it’s been for a while, give or take a few minor fluctuations. Casual games are still far and away the most popular genre, and nearly half of all games (49%) get an E for Everyone ESRB rating — a rating system regularly used by 86% of parents.
This year’s key difference isn’t how many people are playing or who they are, but how they are playing. As Pierre-Louis points out to me, in the 2021 report, 74% of parents said they played games with their kids at least once a week. That’s up from 55% who said the same last year — a massive jump.
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“What I like about that is it mirrors some of the recommendations that ESRB makes to parents about understanding games and gameplay,” he says. “And one of those pieces of advice is to play games with your children, both to understand what they’re playing, but also as a form of connection. And knowing that in the past year that number went from 55% to 74%, means that a lot of parents took the time to really connect and the pandemic gave us time to reassess our priorities and to change our schedules. And it was heartwarming to see that gameplay was something that brought joy to families and connection to families.”
The impact of the pandemic is felt in other places in this year’s report. For instance, more than three-quarters of players said they play games with others online or in person at least weekly, up from two-thirds last year. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said they played more games during the pandemic than they had prior. Seventy-seven percent said they play games with others online or in person at least weekly, up from 65% last year. They played online with others around seven and a half hours per week, well up from 6.6 hours a week last year.
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And critically, 90% of those surveyed said that games brought them joy, with 87% saying games provide stress relief — both critical qualities under normal circumstances, much more so during a global pandemic.
What’s the ESA doing with all these numbers? Though best-known by the player community for running E3 each year, the ESA is a trade association representing the interests of the video game industry to policy makers in the US government. It uses the data it gathers each year to spread positive awareness of the demographics, interests, and concerns of players in the United States — which Pierre-Louis tells me is still critical even as people who play games make up 68% of all Americans. Policy-makers, he says, don’t always have the right context for who a “player” is.
“People think ‘gamer’ and they’ve got an image in their heads. And then you say, ‘Do you play games? Does anyone in your family play games?’ And there’ll be a grandfather who will say, ‘Well, I don’t, except with my grandchild.’ Or, ‘I don’t, but my wife plays every night before she goes to bed, but she’s not a gamer.’
Hence, why the ESA’s survey asks people questions about if, when, where, and how they play games — not if they call themselves “gamers” or not.
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“We found that by posing it in that way, we got a fuller answer than, ‘Are you a gamer?’ Because people have a perception of what is a gamer versus, ‘No, it’s just Candy Crush.’ Or, ‘It’s just Bridge with friends online.’ …For us, a lot of this is providing context and humanizing the narrative. Because once we talk about it and they share their personal experience with either playing or someone in their family playing games, it opens up the conversation in different ways. And that allows us to provide better context for the policy positions that we have, whether it’s on the intellectual property laws or on tech issues, on immigration and trade. That it has real impact on something that is homegrown here in the U.S. that we export and provide jobs within the country.
“With some policy makers who haven’t been engaged in policy areas involving games, sometimes they have a misperception of who a gamer is. That’s where these reports help and that’s where we’re able to use it as a jumping off point to have a conversation about where games are. The other thing we’ve done in the past, and it’s on our website, is provide information about games in various districts or game companies in various districts. And when you humanize it and talk about the economic impact, not only as a nation, but as a state or as a district, it creates more of an affinity around what games mean because they also mean economic opportunity.”
What kind of policy, then, would the ESA like to put forth, apart from a more positive and accurate recognition of people who play games? Pierre-Louis specifically mentions immigration law, referencing the need for the gaming industry to be able to attract diverse talent from all around the world and then retain them. Connected to that is the importance of STEM and STEAM education, he adds later, ensuring the games industry can also grow that talent at home and continue to build strong, talented games studios, with the ESA website also mentioning the importance of the DREAM Act toward the same goal.
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There are plenty of others, of course. The ESA website outlines a number of policy positions, including right-to-repair, IP rights, subscription services, and free speech protections. I ask Pierre-Louis about the recent push from the Biden administration to reinstate net neutrality laws, to which he says the ESA still needs to look at the actual contents of what’s proposed, but that its primary concern “is making sure that video game players have the access and technology they need to be able to play in the ways that they want to play.”
I also ask about the ESA’s stance on blockchain ethics, especially given the recent addition of Mythical Games — a company that’s raised millions recently to build blockchain-based games — as a member company.
“I think one of the things we’re seeing within our members are efforts to provide consumers with different ways to engage in games and that’s yet another opportunity that consumers have to engage with games,” he replies. “I think what they’re doing is really interesting. I think they’re still working through exactly how they’re going to deploy the technology, but it’s an exciting time to be in games. And I think it’s great to see the experimentation going on with lots of companies, including what Mythical is doing to reach audiences in different ways.”
The ESA’s policy interests may very well become increasingly interesting to people who play games as their numbers grow. This year’s report says that 77% of people who play games voted in the 2020 election, a considerable spike from the 59% who said they were “likely to vote” in 2019’s report. Pierre-Louis attributes this to “a general surge in interest in the election cycle” and says the numbers track with increased interest in the general population. But he does think the increase in voting among players matters.
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“I think with respect to the political data, what that allows us to do is to talk to government officials about the fact that the video game population is one they should pay attention to,” he says. “That we are a group that represents all of America and that the policies that impact video games impact the 77% of gamers who said that they voted. And that’s an important revelation.
“I don’t have the breakdown, but [that increase] spans political parties, because everyone is playing games. And I think that’s what it really does. It crystallizes the fact that the video game population and the video game industry is one that they should pay close attention to because we’re an industry that votes and that cares about civic responsibility and civic engagement.”
Ultimately, Pierre-Louis wants to celebrate the ways in which games are not only making people feel happy and connected, but are proving resilient and necessary during a difficult time for the world. He points out the numerous gaming companies that saw their revenues spike in 2020 as a result of people playing more games, different games, and lots of them. He compares the growth of gaming in recent years to something like a Renaissance in which everyone — creators and players of all stripes — is benefitting.
“We’re excited about the numbers that we’re seeing and the connections that they mean people are having,” he concludes. “And really to be able to provide a fuller context to all of our audiences around what games are doing for society. That includes government officials, the media, the video game industry itself. This is who we are. We should be proud of it.”
You can read the entirety of the ESA’s 2021 Essential Facts Report here.
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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
