No Console For Old Men
gamesindustry.biz, on the "growing yet underserved market for grey gamers":
The analyst firm Ampere Analysis told GamesIndustry.biz that in the UK, there were 6.62 million gamers aged 55 or over in 2025. That figure is projected to rise to 7.32 million by 2031. And across Western Europe as a whole, there were 51.89 million gamers aged 55+ in 2025, a figure that's set to rise to 56.9 million by 2031.
Matthew Ball, speaking on The Game Business:
We are definitely losing that cohort. There is a mismatch between the general investment in tutorials for the first few minutes, relative to where actually the player loss happens,
I fundamentally believe that the biggest opportunity is to get people like me to play. I'm a latent gamer; it's there, it's just in the background because I'm too busy, and I can't find the time, I can't justify the time. But if you could get it in front of me and you could distill it down to something that I could get into in five minutes, and I could play it with friends and other people, you would have me. It's gotta be short-form, short session, long arc.
At Denki, this description resonated with what we were seeing and experiencing as time-poor players. We labelled it "Postcore Games: Gaming for the Post-Hardcore Generation":
You and me both Mark [Pincus]. What he's describing is the quintessential Postcore Gamer, and that's the market Denki's now focused on. They're lapsed or latent gamers who've grown up with Hardcore Games but no longer have the time in their lives to devote to them, but unlike Casual Gamers and Social Gamers, Postcore Gamers are completely comfortable with gaming culture. So what they're looking for are products that blend together more hardcore themes and elements with casual product structures and social community dynamics in interesting new ways that meet their needs.
Back then, we reckoned "the Games Industry has about 3-5 years before Postcore becomes truly mainstream.". We were wrong - it was only 14 years before it was even spoken about again - but we had previous:
We set up as an Indie Developer back in 2000 before there was much concept of Indie Developers; We released our first mobile phone game in 2002 when their screens were still monochrome; We developed using Agile methods before the Agile Manifesto was drafted; And we'd made over 100 casual games before anyone mentioned there might be a Casual Games industry.
I still think it's an incredible (and incredibly obvious) opportunity. But it needs to be re-approached from first principles. Designed from the ground up not as games but as amusements with the correct substance, style, experience and emotional fit.
Returning to the gamesindustry.biz article:
Andrew Byatt, CEO of Blaze Entertainment, the makers of the retro-focused Evercade console family, says that a lot of the company's customers are returning to gaming after a long time away. "We find there's a lot of lapsed gamers," he tells GamesIndustry.biz. "They really want to re-experience stuff that they did when they were younger." He thinks this group is underserved. "If all developers are focusing on these huge cinematic experiences, and they're aiming at teenagers and [people in their] early 20s, that kind of age group, then I think they are missing a trick."
It is not the console.
It is the carousel.