[galdor]

My understanding is that the budget required to build a game perceived as "modern" is higher and higher each year, meaning that studios need to target a very large market to be profitable. This is for example why we don't see complex RTS and arena shooters anymore: their market is too small to pay for the investment. The 50+ years old video game market is tiny, and you'd need very different marketing (compared to what works with the usual 15-25yo segment) to target it.

It is true that lots of indie games find success with smaller budgets. But I suspect that lots of indie developers are not 50+ years old. Game development is mostly a craft, and unsurprisingly indie game developers prefer to work on projects similar to what they themselves enjoy.

[throwaway26206]

I'm not sure the market is as tiny as you think. 4 out of 10 adults over 50 play on average 12 hours per week. By reading the article it seems that many are casual gamers who use games to relax, and women are the most frequent players. I suspect you will also find a large portion of 30+ gamers playing the same type of games.

To me it seems like a large enough market to target. Candy crush has nailed the target group (Women 35+) and is making lots of money.

[ido]

    The 50+ years old video game market is tiny

I know this wasn't your main point, but this is very much not the case (source: have worked in games for 13 years).

[taskforcegemini]

there still are plenty of RTS, and probably also arena shooters, depending on what your requirements for inclusion are, coming out. maybe you don't see them because they are drowned out by other stuff, but there still are. (for instance, AOE4 is recent, unreal tournament is soon releasing I think)