A Mature Kind of Fun? Exploring Silver Gamers’ Motivation to Play Casual Games – Results from a Large-Scale Online Survey

Playing video games has become an increasingly popular activity among elderly people. In the present contribution, differences in the motivational profile of these “silver gamers” and younger player segments are investigated. Based on the socio-emotional selectivity theory and age identity theory, it was hypothesized that silver games and younger cohorts differ with respect to the importance of six motivational factors (i.e., challenge, escapism, relaxation, competition, friendship, and collecting/completism). Moreover, it was examined whether these potential age effects interact with gender dynamics in gaming motivations. A large online survey of German players of the casual online game “Farmerama”© (N = 26,109) was conducted. Data analysis revealed that the motivational profile of silver gamers did not differ markedly from the profiles of younger gamer cohorts. Substantial differences between older and younger players were only found for one of the analyzed motivational factors (relaxation). Moreover, no gender-by-age dynamics were identified. Hence, age identity theory and socio-emotional selectivity theory only displayed limited empirical explanatory power to predict specific motivational patterns among silver gamers. Rather, the findings of the present study suggest that older gamers’ motivations to play games are mostly congruent with the reasons why younger people turn to gaming.