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Comment by oytis | Hacker News Reader

When it comes for difference between teen and adult entertainment, the line seems to be pretty arbitrary. E.g. it has been perfectly fine for an adult to enjoy crime fiction or watch football, while it doesn't require a lot of maturity or sophistication, and teens would enjoy the same activities too. Somehow we never got a significant market of computer games for adults though - maybe because adults don't care as much as before about appearing mature.

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>Somehow we never got a significant market of computer games for adults

Most of today's gaming industry is targeting adults. Kids rarely have the money to purchase 70$ games more than once or twice a year.

OK I mean real adults :) The same demographics who you would imagine as a typical reader of Agatha Christie or Tom Clancy, football or horse race enjoyer in the era before computer games and internet

I think the idea that thriller novels or horse racing are more mature than video games questionable, however. Your average adult thriller (or hollywood AAA movie) has a plot that would sit right alongside video game plots.

Don’t you think someone who only ever consumed pulp genre fiction might be thought of a bit negatively?

The claim was that readers of Tom Clancy are more mature than video gamers. I found that claim surprising.

Only as much as someone who’s only ever read shallow corny “action” novels.

Uh, isn’t that the same thing?

What the hell do you think Tom Clancy writes.

Genre fiction? What are you trying to say?

Ubisoft literally has dozens of games branded "Tom Clancy's", so I think we're not too far from that

Their parents very well might.

Computer gaming is a $300bn industry. Kids alone don't have that kind of money.

There is a real "maturity/sophistication" barrier, though. Games came close to breaking through about a decade ago, then enough "gamers" decided they absolutely did not want that and made sure to destroy that possibility.

There are plenty of sophisticated games, it's just a smaller market so you've gotta look a little harder.

Can you give some examples of games that came close to breaking through that maturity/sophistication barrier?

I guess it's been almost 9 years since This War Of Mine.

There are definitely games that skew older — I don’t think that many young kids want to play MS Flight Sim or iRacing. To a certain extent even stuff like fighting games I feel probably overrepresents the over-30 crowd.

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