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Conservative commentator George Will slams gamers

In a bizarre aside shoehorned into his most recent column, conservative writer George Will takes a swipe at video-game-playing adults.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
Probably doesn't own a Wii.

In a bizarre aside shoehorned into his most recent column, conservative writer (and self-professed baseball fanatic) George Will takes a swipe at video-game-playing adults.

Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote.

The actual thrust of the column is about a much more serious threat to the fiber (no pun intended) of our country -- people wearing jeans. He calls it "the plague of that ubiquitous fabric, which is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche."

The latest demographic data on gamers is always readily available from the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group for the video game industry.

The group's latest stats show that only 25-percent of gamers are under 18, and that the average gamer is 35 years old and has been playing for 13 years.