Though it may be a surprise to many, a new study has found that 33 percent of online "Grand Theft Auto V" players are more likely to have children and twice as likely to be married as compared to the average video game player.
Companies have recently seen an "uncharacteristic spike" in the number of middle-aged players.
Exponential Interactive analyzed over two million British players and compared the data to the rest of the internet and general video game population, and discovered that the average "GTA" gamer breaks the stereotype in several ways, the Daily Mail reports.
Adults aged 55 to 64-years-old are the second biggest group of "GTA" players aside from younger people, 47.6 percent of whom work in construction, while 39.8 percent work in finance. Fifty-four percent of those analyzed in the latest study were found to work in the middle-income bracket.
In other words, parents as well as children have fallen in love with Rockstar Games' violent and highly popular series.
The newest game in the successful "Grand Theft Auto" series had the highest retail sales of any other software sold by its parent company, Take-Two Interactive Software, on its first day in stores. Production reportedly cost more than $270 million, though experts predict the game could rake in over $1 billion during its first year on the market.
Notably, researchers from Exponential Interactive also discovered that players of "GTA 5" are five times more likely to be interested in reading books, with a whopping 63 percent interested in running, breaking the stereotype that all gamers are lazy couch potatoes who do nothing but play all day.
