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.
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.
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 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.
