Something I think about from time to time.
My own (living) family members are very into gaming, probably helped by my lifelong habit of giving away computers, gaming systems, vr headsets etc…
Yet as we all grow older, questions arise more and more about whether “gaming” is still appropriate, or whether people should “Act thier age” and whether people like Skyrim Grandma are role-models or head shaking anamolies.
Hmmmmm… Guess I’m on my way to becoming a head-shaking anomaly…
I recently turned 60, and I still play games. I’ve had a similar journey to that of the author; however, I no longer play consoles, and I lost my taste for multiplayer. I primarily play simulators and space games, with an occasional hop into FPS games. I realize that I can no longer keep up with fast-twitch FPS games like Apex or Marvel Rivals. They give me sensory overload and make me painfully aware that I do not have the reflexes of my sons. When I’m not simming, I’m either sucking at racing games or getting deep into CRPGs and some turn-based tactical games.
An issue that I’m facing is that I might have too many hobbies that compete with my time gaming. I paint minis, draw, build models, garden, and find random things around the house to fix or upgrade. I also noticed some days I veg out and consume too much news on the internet.
Anyway, I’m sure my taste will change, but I intend to continue gaming until I no longer can.
I’m coming up on 70, FWIW…
Last console game I played any length of time was Pong on the family TV. Never had any interest in what I, too, refer to as ‘twitch games’. Really they bore me. I ‘play’ simulators, specifically now only one (DCS - in reality I’m spending 99% of my time building a thing to create a ‘better world’ inside DCS…is that play too? Likely).
Haven’t watched that video (came up in my feed a little while ago but didn’t bother with it).
As for the idea of the usefulness (in whatever context) of time spent doing a thing: IMHO anything you do that isn’t putting a roof over your head or feeding you and yours (or related) is a ‘game’.
Woodworking, doing crosswords, chasing an over-engineered hunk of plastic around with a funny stick (golf, my outdoor game of choice) or destroying hords of synthetic creatures with your thumbs…none of these are essential.
But they are fun. I think play has some benefit mentally/emotionally. And at any age.
As for computerized games: at least your brain is doing something. My parents generation (mine too) sat around locked in on a screen that feeds their brains garbage - TV. Endless scrolling the Net may have replaced this. Neither of them require much thought. They produce only reactions (laughter, fear, etc).
Part of me has some level of distrust of someone that doesn’t ‘play’, at all. I try not to judge 
Guess it boils down to time spent in lieu of more foundational things?
no way I had not estimated you a day over 36, based on the projects you do. Which adds in, people who do youthful stuff are perhaps perceived as more youthful.
This is a question that is kind of interesting for MudSpike.
I’m a millennial, so the reaction from myself and the rest of my age bracket is “Why the hell wouldn’t I?” But, we grew up during a serious golden age for video games. It was the start of seeing game ads on TV not just once in a while, but on the regular. A time when budgetary demands were smaller, publishers were throwing cash at any 8 bit Gen-X kid fresh out of college with a weird idea, and it was all working.
Gen X and especially Baby Boomers are going to find themselves feeling this notion to “grow up” a lot more so than folks like myself. But, I think the talk about them needing to find “more mature hobbies” or “act their age” is a myopic discussion.
It’s your time and your money. If you’re a retiree, you’ve got a lot of the former. You aren’t doing any overt harm to society, you’re in a time period where you’ve probably created an online friend group with this interest in mind, and you’re expected to go… do what, exactly? Play bingo?
We’re at a time where gaming has never been so accessible thanks to decades of experience with how to model a GUI, how to breadcrumb and teach a player what to do, and more capable software full stop. We’re also at a time where tech has made other such things even more accessible to older audiences. The first thing that comes to my mind in that regard? E-bike. I just turned 40, but I have 0 joint aches, pains, nothing. I still have enough energy to do some labor all morning, like splitting wood, then jump on a bike for 10, 12, 20 miles. That may not be the case for someone older than I. In this regard, an E-bike becomes a very good idea for someone who wants to cycle. There’s a woman who has become a local legend in BC because she’s in her 70s and she’s shredding some gnarly trails there:
I’m not expecting to see her at Red Bull Hardline, but the fact of the matter is that we’re experiencing technology being used to not just make things easier, but make things better for as many as possible. Gaming has very much benefitted, as well.
After all, people who are in the GD discord will recognize the moniker of Bob Ward. Ward is in his 80s and he’s playing DCS. I hope he’s having fun with the F-100D and remembering his own time.. flying the F-100D out of Phan Rang AFB in 1970.
So, anyone of sense and security will regard a 60-70-80 year old playing video games as little more than a curiosity now at best and with total ambivalence at worst. NOW. This will change. It’s only going to become even more normalized.
It’s the culture, now.
To me, a more interesting question is what the demographic represents… to the jackasses who hold the purse strings. I make no secret of my immense and burning disdain for much of the games industry. I developed it in the mid 00s when I was in college and saw just how much of a digital anus it was and still is. In fact, it’s way worse.
Frankly, this is rubber-stamped by a consumer base too lazy and/or stupid to do anything to indicate their displeasure with these practices. They’d rather whine about meaningless crap and are happy to just kvetch about the usual abusive practices.
But, don’t really see that with individuals in their 40s… 50s.. 60s.. 70s.. and onward. In fact, they remind me of what we millennials were like as kids and teens: OH HELL YEAH, VIDEO GAME, LET’S GET IT STARTED IN HERE. They engage with these games with a huge degree of earnestness and not his cynical and manufactured attitude that younger people seem to engage with.
More importantly, they’re gigantic skinflints when it comes to games. This is something I have been since I left college and I approve SO highly of it. And, I suspect, it reaches beyond even living on a fixed income. I’ve noticed that older generations are more happy with the most basic functions of a game. They also tend to treat microtransactions with the appropriate response: Disregard.
There’s no social media outrage.
There’s no rants infront of a wall of plastic crap.
It’s the worst response that big publishers could ever get in this attention-driven economy that is the internet: “Oh no thank you.”
Honestly, the interesting conversation around older gamers shouldn’t be “Is it acceptable?” but rather “How do we appeal?” And there’s very good precedence for that. After all, the Greatest Generation saw the largest spike of any generation in gaming adoption during the 7th generation of consoles. Nintendo can be blamed for this. The Wii and DS really appealed to those grand parents and great grandparents as it represented a social activity that was:
So, if it’s good enough for grandpa, who once turned an SS prick into a little fascist shishkebab at the end of his Garand’s bayonet? It’s good enough for all of us.
Again, the real question is “How do we appeal?” and this question alone should turn anyone here who is cynical or jaded about the state of games into an optimist. I genuinely mean that because we already have the answer of how to appeal.
It’s what we play on the reg. It’s DCS, it’s ArmA, it’s an independent middle market of developers who self publish. Developers like ED, like Bohemia, like the various acts organized and publishing through Microprose are the answer.
It really boils down to two factors: Value and passion.
Using DCS World as the example, this is a game that seems modern as it possesses tons of DLC you can buy at eye watering prices. However, that’s just the first pass. When we take more time to think about it, we’re getting a study sim level experience akin to Falcon 4 with every purchase and it clearly gives people value. I don’t want to think about how many hours I’ve put into the Phantom, the Hun, and definitely how much I’ve put into the Fishbed.
ED also provides platform updates for free and has even included new maps for free. Bohemia frequently releases new platform and content updates for free in their games and have done so since 2001. Eric Barone aka ConcernedApe of Stardew Valley fame has been iteratively updating his game with new content, for free, since its release 10 years ago.
Demonstrate that the game you’re selling is a good value and then demonstrating you’re putting a degree of passion into it? You’re going to sell product to a demographic that’s probably the hardest to sell to.
So, we shouldn’t be asking “Is it acceptable?” We should be asking “What are they doing right?”
Slighty related…
For some time now I get adverts for a game where it appears you do absolutely nothing!
Third-person view of your character (and I guess maybe others) in some space ship, watching ‘you’ idle about. Character is mostly a young female with and anime-like appearance. Struck me that this maybe the 21st century version of ‘escaping’ the the real world. In this case the Real World is the chaos of the internet.
So, instead of say a long walk on the beach (or drifing along on a kayak - me) or watching the bird feeder from your window to ‘veg out’, they are watching a ‘world’ from the window of their device.
Am I crazy? Don’t answer that
Been telling my (nearly 50 YO son) for years: you MUST have something to look forward to when get up everyday. No matter what it is.
Grandkids (neice & nephew) just left from a summer visit. I had the 10 YO boy dong pushups every morning. About a week into the visit he had to remind me. So my plan worked!
Boys are in trouble in this world, IMO.
Then I taught him chess. I haven’t played in decades BTW. At some point he said, ‘can’t you let me win one’.
Me: “No. keep going and soon you will beat me every time [cuz I’m old]. That’s the goal”. Then I showed him the virture of ‘thinking ahead’.
I think I scare his parents a little
My thoughts are simple, as I age: “you gotta keep moving”. Sounds easy. It is not. Too many ‘static’ distractions.
That’s, honestly, the best virtue you can learn from Chess.
Heh. The older I get, the less I care about that.
That said, I have been off first person shooter games for about ten years now, ass my hands tend to cramp up from playing them.
I have been gravitating more and more towards “dad games” such as Red Dead Redemption 2, DCS, etc.
For me it’s a combination of gaming and modding, which is in a way gaming too.
I would think in my youth in the Eighties I explored all the lightweight games on Commodore 64, Atari ST and various arcade consoles (paid for, pocket money grave) for a lifetime. During studies in the Nineties I got more attracted to sim style games, be it Grand Prix 2 or Apache Longbow or some such. In parallel I played MUDs at university computers, text based role playing games which you could extend yourself.
I blame the latter for my modding interest nowadays, together with the lack of manuals on the pirated games of my youth… It was often harder to understand a games controls than playing the game itself.
For the foreseeable future I do not think my modding interest and with it the accompanying games will change. I find the idea to extend the virtual world a tiny bit to my liking quite good 
Same here. I actually stopped caring about it several years ago. In my teens I felt that building LEGO was for kids, so I had a pause from that for about a decade. Thats about the only thing that wasn’t ”age appropriate”, in a period when it was kind of important to appear grown up… As I found my place in society I felt that people who would judge me because of my hobbies, was not persons I would want to be associated with anyway, so fudge them. And as life progressed I found people with similar interests and they are now my friends. I couldn’t care less about what someone who don’t actually know me, thinks about my hobbies.
This
I am only a couple of years younger and you could have written that for me…
About all I can add to that and what everyone else has said is - growing old is compulsory, growing up is optional & ‘age appropriate’ is doing whatever floats your boat, just as long as it isn’t hurting anyone else (for @schurem Judo is an exception).
Besides I love the looks I get when I wear this T-Shirt into town:
When I do judo, not hurting people is my nr1 priority. You can not play that game on your own, so your training partner is essential, keeping them happy and hale is paramount!
This brings back fond memories of me playing Draughts/Checkers with my grandad. He never lost. I put it down to him being based in Haifa during WW2 with not a lot to do, though I was too young to rib him about that.
I don’t think I ever beat him. Frustratingly he’d help my gran to beat me from a massive losing position.
I miss them.
That’s pretty cool. Now that I think about it I taught my grandson chess when he was about 14. Wasn’t long before it was about 50/50. I’m happy that he’s smarter than I. So, I play chees about, oh, every decade?
I suppose one must watch the video in order to understand the intent of this thread. I have a rule to never watch anything that has as its thumbnail the face of the content creator. So it is admittedly my own fault that I may be missing the point. All games are great for all people of all ages. All gaming devices are appropriate gateways to play. I am a few years shy of 60 and have seen in my 50 year gaming history a linear trajectory away from PC to consoles. But I do still enjoy occasional doses of DCS and IL2. (Currently in Wisconsin hanging with 5 other IL2 friends.) My Japanese wife tells me that stories of old people gaming (mainly Fortnite and similar) have become quite common in Japan recently. It is seen (marketed?) as a way to keep mentally agile. I doubt any claims to a benefit further than a recognition that gaming is play and play is essential to happiness.
Never a truer word was spoken.
I personally believe that it is the stimulation of imagination, more so than physical activity (although that is important too) that is the key to longevity…
All of it, imagination, social play, finding and creating meaning, and physical things like hand-eye coordination, reaction timing, situational awareness and simple body movement.
Play is essential. Homo Ludens.
