This project took six years of my spare time but on the 22th of June in 2011 it was finally done: my doctoral dissertation on the older audience of digital games. I’m thrilled to mention that I managed to finish it before becoming a member of said audience myself. If you are interested in reading it and you happen to be able to read Dutch as well as English, then you can download it below. Some parts of it have also been translated to English articles, such as:

• De Schutter, B., Brown, J. A., & Vanden Abeele, V. (2014). The domestication of digital games in the lives of older adults. New Media & Society, 1461444814522945. doi:10.1177/1461444814522945
• De Schutter, B., & Malliet, S. (2014). The older player of digital games: A classification based on perceived need satisfaction. Communications, 39(1), 67–88.
• De Schutter, B. (2011). Never Too Old to Play: The Appeal of Digital Games to an Older Audience. Games and Culture:A Journal of Interactive Media, 6(2), 155–170. doi:10.1177/1555412010364978

• De Schutter, B., & Vanden Abeele, V. (2010). Designing meaningful play within the psycho-social context of older adults. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Fun and Games (pp. 84–93). New York, NY, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/1823818.1823827

Furthermore, the provided presentation has its notes in English, and at the end of the dissertation there is an English and French summary.