Instead of the usual QW-related poll, why not check the age distribution of the scene.

//EDIT: due to lack of editing poll options, let's rephrase a bit.

- above 30 means 31-40 years old.
- above 40 means at least 41 years old or more.

23 this year to be "exact"..

im an oldie, 20!

20 here as well!

23

32

27

24

35

25 but closing in to 26 way too fast!

25

34

Almost 26 ;]

21 :cool:

24, 25 in a couple of days =)

almost 24
i wanna be child for a life.

Well, i'm 22, but i can has strong booze since i was 18.

30

mummy

Me too Buur

shouldnt you be a daddy in stead of a mummy?
welcome to the club of mummies moonie

Mummy == http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/files/imagecache/news/files/news/20080716_mummy.jpg

28

Well uh, we have 117 votes now, only 1% of those who voted is below 20. That really surprises me .. in a bad sense. That indicates something terribly bad. I mean yeah I know scene is growing older, everyone knows that, but I'd never expect players below 20 to be only 1% of the scene.

29 this year

I'm amazed that there is any under 20 o

Soon" our sons and daughters gonna want to beat their stupid fathers in their silly oldschool game qwboom

41 on the first april 2010 i voted mummy, not long now

It shouldn't be all that surprising though, since:

-Quake has a lot of oldschool players, as we all know, and chances are most oldschool players will be in their 20s or above by now even if they started as a teenager
-Quake hasn't been readily available in shops for a long time, anyone that bought it is probably in their 20s or later by now, and getting into QW via other means (maybe download on Steam and then slap nQuake over the top or something) isn't really a traditionally route into a game, so numbers will be limited
-Even the 'new' players often seem to not actually be new players to FPS gaming, they are just people who were playing other FPS like Q3, CPMA or whatever and got persuaded to give QW a try. Again, if they've played a couple of years on another game, it's more likely they won't be under 20 years of age.

I think a follow-up questions would be something like "How old were you when you starting playing QW?" and "How many years have you played online FPS?" The answers to those might help to understand a bit more about why there are so few players under 20; I suspect most of the ones who were under 20 when they started have simply played enough years to breach that 20 years of age barrier.

Also, this study from 2004 might be of interest as it assesses the demographic of QW players (albeit relatively small sample and wide age bandings) and also shows how long they have been playing: http://www.jiad.org/article54