7 ms·

Today Show hosts think gamers over 30 are "weird"

23 points by seagaia 15y ago

seagaia 15y ago
I for one think this kind of mindset is ridiculous, only led by stereotypes of gamers and a general ignorance towards the video gaming community. First of all, the question being posed is sexist, it only asks about "men over 30", which tells me there must be a stereotype about "girls not being able to game" or something ridiculous. Their laughs disgust me, and I'm a bit scared at how many people their opinions influence per day.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  ...this kind of mindset is ridiculous, only led by stereotypes of [] and a general ignorance towards the [] community. Fill in the blank and welcome to the mainstream US mindset, where Taco Bell resembles Mexican food, Dick van Dyke can sound like someone from England, and all folk dancers stick out their elbows and move like Popeye.
systemtrigger 15y ago
I bet they judge men who watch television more favorably.
- bct 15y ago
  Anyone who thinks of "TV-watcher" as a significant part of their identity is a bit weird, too.
  - Symmetry 15y ago
    The things we do that are considered weird by other have a way of forming part of our identity, whether they otherwise would have or not. Nobody thinks its weird to watch a lot of TV, so even those people who spend way too much time watching TV consider themselves "TV-watchers".
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
mechanical_fish 15y ago
The headline refers to celebrities on the Today show, not "people". It is sometimes hard to wrap one's head around the fact that generational change happens at the speed of... generations. One year per year, on average. Tune in ten years from now, when the average age of gamers may well be 47, yet gamers over 40 will be considered "weird" by people significantly older than 40.
- ericd 15y ago
  Interesting point - maybe they're just saying that early adopters are weird.
- atomicdog 15y ago
  I think it's more of a "you should have kids/be spending all your time with your kids in your thirties!" thing more than a "you shouldn't be playing games in your thirties" thing. So if, ten years from now, the average age for childbirth has not increased, we may still be seeing this kind of prejudice.
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    Good point. Time does march on, and human activity is not age-invariant, especially after age 120. This is also a better hypothesis because it has better explanatory power: The Today show is predominantly watched by people who are not scrambling to get to work in the morning, and that group is going to contain a high percentage of people with kids, and such people think like... people with kids.
Alex3917 15y ago
I think there is good reason to be skeptical of hardcore gamers who are above a certain age. These games all use the same basic tricks to trigger to pleasure mechanisms of the brain. As such, anyone who is sufficiently intelligent should be able to figure out that they're all basically the same, and thus to be avoided after a certain point if one wants to keep growing as a person. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy playing genuinely novel games when they come out like Katamari Damacy or Braid, but that's still not more than a few hours a year. And I appreciate that gaming can have other ancillary social or parenting benefits. But at it's root most serious games today are designed to exploit the mechanisms of addiction. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, it may even be beneficial to a limited extent. But if you eventually want to make your own art and contribute to the world in a meaningful way then this requires becoming fully self-actualized. And this is very difficult when you start spending several hours per day deriving pleasure from the baser parts of the brain. That being said I'm not a neuroscientist, but this is sort of the vague feeling I get after reading some of the basic literature on both addiction and extrinsic motivation.
- txxxxd 15y ago
  Would you be skeptical of a chess player above a certain age as well?
  - pessimizer 15y ago
    Not the other poster, but I wouldn't be. In my semi-baseless opinion, chess playing pleasure is more like the pleasure you get from reading or doing math. Video game pleasure is more like television or cocaine.
    - Impossible 15y ago
      What about the pleasure you get from playing a video game version of Chess? It just doesn't make sense to lump media as varied as video games, books and television into broad categories of pleasure. The content matters more than the medium.
  - Symmetry 15y ago
ilamont 15y ago
I think many people in the Today show's late morning audience, were they to be mapped to the technology adoption curve, would be classified as late mainstream or even "laggards". Calling adult gamers "weird" plays into preconceived or outdated notions of gaming that many of them have.
haldean 15y ago
For what it's worth, I think people who watch the Today Show are weird, independent of age.
Cyranix 15y ago
I am a gamer, and I will be a gamer in a couple years when I'm over 30. But one mistake that I've seen a lot of gamers make when getting riled up over this issue of perception, including the author of the linked article, is making a faulty jump in logic -- from "The average gamer is over 30 years old [according to a variety of sources]" to "People over 30 years old are more likely to be gamers than not". I have yet to see a credible source come out and directly say this. Take a look at the ESA stats in the article comments from Lea Hill -- they're given in a way that tries to imply it. In this regard and many others, the rhetoric around social acceptance, identity (including age, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political belief, and ethnicity or nationality), and maturity is really twisted. Most people are defending opinions instead of examining realities... I've been a lot happier since I stopped following the discussion in any serious way.
- krschultz 15y ago
  I'd also like to see a median age rather than an average. It's one of those times when one direction of the average has a limit (how young you can be and still be a gamer) while the other side of the average (maximum age) is far less limited. Lets say the average starting age for a gamer is 7, that means they can only be 23 years younger than the 'average' game, while someone who is 70 years old is 40 years older than the 'average' gamer. I bet the median is lower than 30. Not to mention if you time weight it. When I was 15 I spent a heck of a lot more hours playing games than I do now. I'm probably still a 'gamer' because I have Starcraft 2 installed on my PC, but I havent played it in 5 weeks. When Starcraft 1 came out, I was lucky if I saw the sun in 5 weeks because I was playing Starcraft.
kleiba 15y ago
Who cares?
walru 15y ago
“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” -John Lennon
gamble 15y ago
I believe the inflection point when video games became mainstream was the release of the original Playstation in 1995. Prior to that point, at least in my experience, video games were strictly a pass-time for nerds. The Playstation was very successful at marketing video games to a wider, if not older audience. People who were in their early teens when they got their Playstation are just now reaching their thirties. Anyone older than that is likely to have acquired a contempt for video games before they became mainstream, and hasn't seen fit to update their opinions in the intervening decades.

23 points by seagaia 15y ago

I for one think this kind of mindset is ridiculous, only led by stereotypes of gamers and a general ignorance towards the video gaming community. First of all, the question being posed is sexist, it only asks about "men over 30", which tells me there must be a stereotype about "girls not being able to game" or something ridiculous. Their laughs disgust me, and I'm a bit scared at how many people their opinions influence per day.

stcredzero 15y ago
...this kind of mindset is ridiculous, only led by stereotypes of [] and a general ignorance towards the [] community. Fill in the blank and welcome to the mainstream US mindset, where Taco Bell resembles Mexican food, Dick van Dyke can sound like someone from England, and all folk dancers stick out their elbows and move like Popeye.

systemtrigger 15y ago

I bet they judge men who watch television more favorably.

bct 15y ago
Anyone who thinks of "TV-watcher" as a significant part of their identity is a bit weird, too.
- Symmetry 15y ago
  The things we do that are considered weird by other have a way of forming part of our identity, whether they otherwise would have or not. Nobody thinks its weird to watch a lot of TV, so even those people who spend way too much time watching TV consider themselves "TV-watchers".
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

mechanical_fish 15y ago

The headline refers to celebrities on the Today show, not "people". It is sometimes hard to wrap one's head around the fact that generational change happens at the speed of... generations. One year per year, on average. Tune in ten years from now, when the average age of gamers may well be 47, yet gamers over 40 will be considered "weird" by people significantly older than 40.

ericd 15y ago
Interesting point - maybe they're just saying that early adopters are weird.
atomicdog 15y ago
I think it's more of a "you should have kids/be spending all your time with your kids in your thirties!" thing more than a "you shouldn't be playing games in your thirties" thing. So if, ten years from now, the average age for childbirth has not increased, we may still be seeing this kind of prejudice.
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  Good point. Time does march on, and human activity is not age-invariant, especially after age 120. This is also a better hypothesis because it has better explanatory power: The Today show is predominantly watched by people who are not scrambling to get to work in the morning, and that group is going to contain a high percentage of people with kids, and such people think like... people with kids.

Alex3917 15y ago

I think there is good reason to be skeptical of hardcore gamers who are above a certain age. These games all use the same basic tricks to trigger to pleasure mechanisms of the brain. As such, anyone who is sufficiently intelligent should be able to figure out that they're all basically the same, and thus to be avoided after a certain point if one wants to keep growing as a person. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy playing genuinely novel games when they come out like Katamari Damacy or Braid, but that's still not more than a few hours a year. And I appreciate that gaming can have other ancillary social or parenting benefits. But at it's root most serious games today are designed to exploit the mechanisms of addiction. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, it may even be beneficial to a limited extent. But if you eventually want to make your own art and contribute to the world in a meaningful way then this requires becoming fully self-actualized. And this is very difficult when you start spending several hours per day deriving pleasure from the baser parts of the brain. That being said I'm not a neuroscientist, but this is sort of the vague feeling I get after reading some of the basic literature on both addiction and extrinsic motivation.

txxxxd 15y ago
Would you be skeptical of a chess player above a certain age as well?
- pessimizer 15y ago
  Not the other poster, but I wouldn't be. In my semi-baseless opinion, chess playing pleasure is more like the pleasure you get from reading or doing math. Video game pleasure is more like television or cocaine.
  - Impossible 15y ago
    What about the pleasure you get from playing a video game version of Chess? It just doesn't make sense to lump media as varied as video games, books and television into broad categories of pleasure. The content matters more than the medium.
- Symmetry 15y ago

ilamont 15y ago

I think many people in the Today show's late morning audience, were they to be mapped to the technology adoption curve, would be classified as late mainstream or even "laggards". Calling adult gamers "weird" plays into preconceived or outdated notions of gaming that many of them have.

haldean 15y ago

For what it's worth, I think people who watch the Today Show are weird, independent of age.

Cyranix 15y ago

I am a gamer, and I will be a gamer in a couple years when I'm over 30. But one mistake that I've seen a lot of gamers make when getting riled up over this issue of perception, including the author of the linked article, is making a faulty jump in logic -- from "The average gamer is over 30 years old [according to a variety of sources]" to "People over 30 years old are more likely to be gamers than not". I have yet to see a credible source come out and directly say this. Take a look at the ESA stats in the article comments from Lea Hill -- they're given in a way that tries to imply it. In this regard and many others, the rhetoric around social acceptance, identity (including age, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political belief, and ethnicity or nationality), and maturity is really twisted. Most people are defending opinions instead of examining realities... I've been a lot happier since I stopped following the discussion in any serious way.

krschultz 15y ago
I'd also like to see a median age rather than an average. It's one of those times when one direction of the average has a limit (how young you can be and still be a gamer) while the other side of the average (maximum age) is far less limited. Lets say the average starting age for a gamer is 7, that means they can only be 23 years younger than the 'average' game, while someone who is 70 years old is 40 years older than the 'average' gamer. I bet the median is lower than 30. Not to mention if you time weight it. When I was 15 I spent a heck of a lot more hours playing games than I do now. I'm probably still a 'gamer' because I have Starcraft 2 installed on my PC, but I havent played it in 5 weeks. When Starcraft 1 came out, I was lucky if I saw the sun in 5 weeks because I was playing Starcraft.

kleiba 15y ago

Who cares?

walru 15y ago

“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” -John Lennon

gamble 15y ago

I believe the inflection point when video games became mainstream was the release of the original Playstation in 1995. Prior to that point, at least in my experience, video games were strictly a pass-time for nerds. The Playstation was very successful at marketing video games to a wider, if not older audience. People who were in their early teens when they got their Playstation are just now reaching their thirties. Anyone older than that is likely to have acquired a contempt for video games before they became mainstream, and hasn't seen fit to update their opinions in the intervening decades.