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Gamers 50-plus are a growing force in the tech market
- ChancyChance 3y agoI'm a 50+ gamer and I could care less about refresh rates, any first-person shooters (I guess that's two FPS I don't care about!), photorealism, and dance/emotes. Stanley Parable was probably the last time I was blown away by a game. I'm glad to see more indie titles on Steam, but it is hard to sort through the chaff. Also: AARP commenting on over 50? /sighs/
- strictnein 3y agoIf you liked The Stanley Parable, the creator of the game made a sort of meta game about the development process called The Beginner's Guide. It's not in the same league, but it's an interesting experience.
- telotortium 3y agoYou have to be only 55 to join AARP, so seems relevant - 50+ is probably the easiest survey data to get.
- mfragin 3y agoThe woman who sold me my last phone was probably in her early 20s, and she joined AARP for the discounts on her phone plan. Off topic: the old farts in the picture hold the controller like old farts. The default way for people my age to pick up a Playstation or Xbox controller is to have your trigger fingers nowhere near the R1, L1 buttons....
- ChancyChance 3y agoI'm so old I can't get the hang of those new-fangled controllers. :)
- morsch 3y agoPresumably you're talking about the claw grip? Didn't realize that was the new default. Orthopedic specialists, take note.
- ChancyChance 3y agoWhoa, I didn't know that! TIL.
- jasonlotito 3y agoYou do not have to be 55 to join AARP. You have to be 18+. There are some benefits only 50+ are eligible for though.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoI feel like almost no one knows this. It would be fun to join, get some AARP swag to display at work and then casually talk up your anti aging regimen to everyone.
- planetafro 3y agoIkr. So hard to filter thru the trash. I find a nice guided semi-open world game is my jam. Disco Elysium. Last of us. Uncharted series. I do enjoy some of the tight metroidvanias as well. Dead cells. Ori. Etc... Happy hunting!
- JakeAl 3y agoStanley Parable was pretty awesome in it's simplicity. Right there with you when it comes to high tech fancy graphics and animations and over the top storytelling instead of adding the equivalent manhours to gameplay.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoThe original HL mod was curious since it recycled assets and had an other worldly feel carrying over
- mech422 3y agoI'm another 50+ gamer - I tend to like MMOrpgs but I'm not a fan of PVP..I prefer a nice story based setup. I also like lots of 'leisure' activities like crafting, hobbies, fishing, collections, housing and cosmetics (I find them all to be good to relax/chill or kill time with). I can't really handle the current 'pixel-art' craze - I waited to long for stuff to progress beyond that. But I've found Lord of the Rings Online to have a really good story, tons of stuff to do, and huge zones to explore. At 16 years old, the graphics are not exactly 'cutting edge' - but they're not bad, and they are overhauling them. ESO wasn't bad either. Harvesting in FF:ARR was an RSI inducing click fest but it was really pretty and I think it has housing now. ArcheAge was way too much like a second job... edit: spelling
- ChancyChance 3y agoWoW floored me, it was what I had always wanted in a game since first playing Ultima (I). The grind and the silliness finally killed it tho (plus trying to wrangle time to play after putting the kids to bed, I got very little sleep for 2 years). Funny you mention LotR online, as my guild lost a number of players to it when it first came out. Didn't know it was still alive and kicking! I kinda lament missing Eve Online, that also sounded fun. EDIT. Mac support deprecated on LotR. :( And I only use my PC through Remote Desktop... maybe i'll give it a whirl anyways....
- mech422 3y agoOddly enough - Wow and Runescape are like the only 2 we didn't play...WoW's art style just never appealed. But we played SWG/SWTOR, EQ/EQ2 (lots of EQ2 - one of our favorites), Darkfall, FF:ARR, ESO, Ryzom, DDO, CoH, New World, Aion, Riders of Icaraus, Project Gorgon ( Very unique though a bit rough) Now we're waiting on Ashes of Creation, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. We just end up going back to LoTro a lot because its very casual friendly, the story/quest lines are awesome, its HUGE! (one of the largest maps second only to WoW and procedurally generated IIRC). Level cap is 140 now, so lots of stuff to do and see without having to 'end game grind'..Oh! and PVP in LoTro is called "monster play" - its literall the "freeps vs the creeps" - you can play as one of the "free peoples" (human,elf, etc) or as a "monster" - giant spider, wolf, orc, etc. You 'monster' characters actually have their own progression and skills and can be leveled like your 'regular' characters. Anyway - I hope you can get it working! If it helps, it runs under proton/Steam on Linux too!
- xboxnolifes 3y agoPhotorealism is definitely something that I feel is way over-targeted. It has never been something that makes or breaks a game for me. Even worse, games that try to sell themselves on photorealism tend to be a negative sign of the gameplay. I much prefer any other cohesive artistic style. I don't think any of my favorite (/most played) games have a style of realism: (Modded) Minecraft, Factorio, Civilization V/IV, Slay the Spire, Stellaris, Terraria, Rocket League, (Old School) Runescape, and RimWorld.
- BoiledCabbage 3y ago> Photorealism is definitely something that I feel is way over-targeted. It has never been something that makes or breaks a game for me. It's bugged me for years that so many people don't see this. Photorealistic Candy Land is still just playing Candy Land, but so many people are driven by photorealism and eat it up.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoIt depends a lot on what sort of game it is I think. If the game relies on triggering human environmental instincts to be enjoyable, like forest-feeling, or fire-feeling, or bird-feeling, etc, then more photorealism seems helpful, if not all-important. If it's mostly about something else then not really helpful.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoI'm a 50+ game author, ha ha. Curiously though, I'm not much of a gamer. Maybe I don't care too much for first-person shooters either.
- sombragris 3y agoI like FPS depending on the style and gameplay. Frantic MMO FPS such as CoD don't have any appeal to me, but as I said before, I liked Quake 4, and since then I played a number of FPS, most of them purchased from GOG: Crysis, Far Cry 1 and 2 (truly excellent game in many respects), Doom 3, Immortal Redneck, F.E.A.R. (another masterpiece)... What I didn't like was the Half-Life series, even though I can easily see how foundational they were for the genre. Too much puzzle solving. Now I mostly play action RPGs, I'm currently playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. Nice game, although there are various aspects in which I am less than impressed. Parent is right, the least thing I worry about are fps above 24, refresh rates, and insane difficulty levels. I play most games on Normal or Easy difficulties.
- patja 3y agoWho is this surprising? 50 year olds grew up on Asteroids, Donkey Kong, and Zork.
- telotortium 3y agoYeah, the 80s were a long time ago.
- jasonjamerson 3y agoThis just tells us that the first generation to grow up with gaming still enjoys it.
- ulrashida 3y agoWho would have ever expected the entertainment is something people of all ages enjoy, right? The media still has this sense of breathless amazement on the topic that is hard to understand.
- nirav72 3y agoThis isn’t surprising, considering 50+ gamers came of age at the start of home gaming boom. They grew up on video games. Either on Atari, Calico , Intellivision , Commodore or later NES. Also arcades. 50+ year olds are probably at a point in their lives where they also have a bit more disposable income than later generations. Although, in my case at 51,despite having the disposable income - I just don't have the time to invest in a game that requires lot of grinding away. Especially with many of the big-budget popular MMORPGs that require lot of play hours.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago> Calico ColecoVision I don’t know if you remember, but before the cartridge consoles, we had a shit ton of black and white PONG consoles… all with the same 5 games. I think they all used the same chip but changed the packaging and controllers.
- nathanaldensr 3y agoMy dad and brother used to always talk about playing Zaxxon when I was super young.
- codeslave13 3y agoYup. Ours was an odysee system. That started it for me. Been gaming ever since
- nirav72 3y agoYeah, I remember those single game machines as well. But like most kids , including me the time , the first exposure to a home console was when the Atari 2600 was released. It seemed liked everyone had one. Of course there were few kids that had the ColecoVision or Intellivsion box (with its weird funky controller)
- msla 3y agoA few chips, in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AY-3-8500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AY-3-8500 http://www.pong-story.com/gi.htm http://www.pong-story.com/gi.htm It was an interesting era in chip design.
- crooked-v 3y agoI have to wonder what sort of interestingly weird stuff this is going to do to the statistics as this cohort continues to age, since this will likely displace a lot of 'sitting around watching TV' behavior (even if it's just 'sitting around playing video games' instead). It feels like it will be a comparatively huge boost to mental engagement in old age.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 7speter 3y agoIt seems that graphics cards are becoming luxury prices atm, for one.
- stubish 3y agoOnly if you insist on buying the latest generation. It matters little to the 50+, who have enough life experience to, in general, not be the people who fall into the trap of buying the latest and greatest. To participate in gaming at the 'high end', you need a newish Playstation or XBox, or PC equivalent. Anything beyond that is an indulgence, and competing with lots of things for our discretionary spending. Gaming today is incredibly cheap compared to hobbies in the 80s. To those of us who remember when those primitive game consoles and TVs cost hundreds of 80s dollars and computers cost thousands of 80s dollars, the cost of the latest gen video cards seems rational, but common sense and frugality that comes with retirement planning means we don't buy them unless there is spare cash to burn.
- stubish 3y agoIt will be interesting. Discretionary funds being spent on virtual hats, instead of 'granny bait' catalogs. eBooks instead of physical books (bigger text for aging eyes!). Subscription services instead of vinyl records and VHS tapes. More interesting is if this will hit the property market, as will less physical stuff you need less space. My parents had to have a big house for all their stuff. I recently retired and and most of my stuff is in boxes in a shed awaiting sorting and donation to charity, the physical books I will never read, the DVDs I will never watch, the CDs I will never play, the obsolete electronics.
- antiterra 3y agoPer the image at the head of the article, they’re still not yet a growing force in stock photography. Which seems a reasonable explanation as to why it’s so incredibly difficult to get Midjourney et al to generate realistic images of elderly people playing video games. I spent nearly a month’s worth of credit trying to get it to show older people playing Dance Dance Revolution. Also, my grandmother who recently passed away at 96, spent hours and hours playing games like Candy Crush. She often passed out in front of her computer at 2am. Not that ‘casual’ imo. My mom does the same, feels like some kind of sick payback for being addicted to NES as a kid.
- the_real_sparky 3y agoBetter Candy Crush than slot machines?
- JakeAl 3y agoVideo slot machine are HUGE in senior centers. I'm still shocked at how many people actually play digital slot machines as the odds of winning posted on the machine are literally the odds of winning.
- byvirtueof 3y agoMy guess it's a result of the correlation between senior living, loneliness & addictive behaviours. The role of loneliness and self-control in predicting problem gambling behaviour: https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/INFORMIT.859155913483693 https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/INFORMIT.8591559... Social isolation and loneliness: the new geriatric giants: https://www.cfp.ca/content/66/3/176.full https://www.cfp.ca/content/66/3/176.full
- ajmurmann 3y agoIt's so weird when that happens. During the Wii boom my parents visited for Christmas. I got them into Mario Kart and on Christmas Eve I cooked for the family. When done, I had to repeatedly encourage my parents to please stop playing Mario Kart and join my wife and me for Christmas dinner before the food gets cold. Very strange to experience this in reverse, as I still had vivid memories of my parents trying to pull me away from Link's Awakening on my GameBoy many Christmases earlier.
- sombragris 3y agoI'm 52. I got back to gaming in 2020, just as I turned 50. I always wanted to play Quake 4, so I created an account in GOG and purchased it. I keep gaming till today.
- MrFoof 3y agoMy father turns 74 this year. He still will very proudly 100% a Legend of Zelda title without looking up an FAQ. The whole reason I play video games is because my parents did. Some of my earliest memories was being crammed on the couch with my parents and sister, trying to wrap my head around Missile Command on an Atari VCS (2600) before the age of three. When we got an NES, the common thing was after we were put to bed, we'd hear the screeching of tires in R.C. Pro-AM. Or the music from Ice Climber. Or the frantic quacking of Duck Hunt. Many years ago I gave my folks a Nintendo DSi XL for the holidays, with a bunch of games. When I went back for Mother's Day, I noticed the DSi XL was blue instead of white... because they bought a second (blue) one so they could both be playing games at the same time. Dad plays a lot more on his iPad nowadays given his vision, but things like Chris Sawyer's top-notch iOS port of Roller Coaster Tycoon. He'll AirPlay it to the TV so him and mom can collaborate, or to show houseguests his parks. Or he plays Firaxis's great ports of the modern X-COMs. Mom likes Stardew Valley quite a bit, though still breaks out the Professor Layton series on the DS.
- nusaru 3y agoI find your comment hard to believe—because it’s so wholesome. Your parents rock!
- MrFoof 3y agoI think my parents realized when they were adults (late 20s, early 30s) is that games had staying power and were potentially evergreen entertainment. They could see it was more than a fad, especially when N years later their kids are playing with the same things (plus Lego) all the time, and weren’t asking for the new whatever toy. Games get old, but the good ones hold up. Some of my favorite games from 35+ years ago still hold up extraordinarily well. It’s rare that you’ll watch a single movie hundreds of times, but there’s games where you easily can. Certainly not all, but a good chunk of them. My folks put them down because of real life and because their son could demolish them in anything competitive (heck, I did speedrunning for a bit at some of the highest levels), but when you give them some top quality games and they have the time, they remembered the value pretty quick. As they’re moving into a very fixed income, they see the value for money they get from them. Granted, they lucked out that one of their kids keeps a pulse on what’s good for all audiences. I don’t think my mom would’ve stumbled onto Baba Is You if I didn’t gift it to her. Dad would’ve never found his ideal digital train set (I now have my father’s trains) in OpenTTD if I didn’t point him in that direction.
- satvikpendem 3y ago> the No. 1 gaming device for those 50-plus is still the smartphone, with 84% identifying it as their gaming device of choice and three in ten (30%) exclusively using their smartphones for gaming. Not to be a downer but I wouldn't exactly count playing solitare or Candy Crush (or other gambling-adjacent games) as the same as how most gamers would use the phrase, which is generally about PC and console gaming.
- dmitrygr 3y ago[flagged]
- satvikpendem 3y agoThanks, I try to speak for everyone whenever I do utter any sentence.
- dbmikus 3y agoAgreed. Based on the headline, I was expecting more of a "gamer" gamer demographic--those that identify as gamers. But when I got to the breakdown of game categories, it was basically all digital board games and puzzle games. Games: yes Gamers: not the type of gamers that would self-identify as one Not trying to be disparaging, but I just was expecting something else from the headline.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago"These days, isn't the average gamer a middle aged woman playing Candy Crush ?" is a favorite phrase of mine when I feel that some people are taking the conversation in a direction that is way too identitarian / cliché.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoNo. These days, as all the days past, it's a 75yo woman playing a slot machine.
- watwut 3y agoThe issue here is whether gamer means "people who play games" or whether it means "specific self selected group". Or rather, the question is, why does the opinion of these PC and console gaming matter here? The topic is very clearly older people who play games and market. Of course I do not want to be associated with "gamers" as a cultural group, thank you very much. But, that does not mean it should be impossible to discuss actual smart phone games I used to like or still like. I know that gamers feel offended every time games I like get discuss without it being pointed out how inferior those games are. Which is one of reasons why I do not want to be associated with that cultural group. But that does not mean everyone needs to constantly tip toe arounds the topic and it should be freaking possible to use that word in general sense.
- kristianp 3y agoSpending $49 within a six-month time frame? Seems like not much, but might not be far off the spend of younger gamers, depending on how you define a "gamer".
- eek2121 3y agoDoesn't surprise me. I am in my 40s and my Steam library alone contains almost 2,000 games. That is to say nothing of GOG, Epic, and other platforms. Many of us tech folks are huge gamers.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI’m 61, and play a fair bit. Usually, it’s when I need a break from coding. However, it’s definitely a “side gig,” for me. I don’t have a console, or a PC gaming rig. I’m also not into MP gaming. I don’t like being fragged by a 15-year-old kid, yelling physically impossible suggestions at me. Just my Mac, and my iPad, with a couple of rather old games.
- gaoshan 3y agoThis is me though I was never really a gamer growing up. As a child I loved playing Adventure on my friend's Atari 3600 but never had a game console of my own until recently (I bought an Xbox). Now I play, of all things, Fortnite (mainly because it was free to try out, lol) and I'm not terrible... probably pretty good for my age group (absolutely slower than the kids, though). As a programmer I am still fairly mentally agile but this game feels like it helps. Doesn't hurt that our office has a Playstation and I can, on occasion, play there much to the surprise of some younger folks.
- javchz 3y agoMy grandma, she's 90 something, and you can bet she's got more hours on Candy Crush than a professional eSports player has on their MOBAS or FPS. Companies that think games are only for young people are leaving a lot of money on the table.
- cultureswitch 3y agoWithout trying to disparage anyone, it seems games are overwhelmingly still for younger people, while Skinner boxes are for all ages. I see this first hand with parents who used to be actual gamers 20 years ago but nowadays will rather brainrot "playing a game" on their phone.
- causality0 3y agowith 84% identifying it as their gaming device of choice and three in ten (30%) exclusively using their smartphones for gaming. There it is. Sure, shovelware mobile gaming is technically a part of the gaming industry but should you really give a damn beyond economic reasons? It's like saying so and so group is a growing force in cinema but they're watching The Emoji Movie. Who is crafting amazing experiences on mobile? Which smartphone games move you to tears? What studio is pushing graphics to the breaking point and making users go "oh my god, I didn't know games could look like this"? When's the last time you bought a soundtrack from an iPhone game? Nobody and never.
- wankle 3y agoNo 50+ gamers I know either use smart phones or consoles for gaming, well some use consoles. Smart phones suck for gaming, no tactile feel from virtual buttons.
- causality0 3y agoDon't get me started. It's a huge market, there's enough consumer interest to make and sell phones with air triggers and actual cooling fans, yet somehow a d-pad and a couple buttons is a bridge too far.
- MonaroVXR 3y agosmartphones game raking in more money than their console counterpart. I don't have a source available, I hate it, because it brings a lot of bad things up.
- cultureswitch 3y agoMonument valley was good and the soundtrack was also killer. Extreme example unfortunately. Mobile gaming as a whole is trash.
- watwut 3y ago> Who is crafting amazing experiences on mobile? Which smartphone games move you to tears? PC games never ever moved me to tears. PC and console games are not exactly well written, they are not about that anyway. I would rather play smartphone games, because in last 15 years, I found some I actually enjoyed. > What studio is pushing graphics to the breaking point and making users go "oh my god, I didn't know games could look like this"? This just brings price up for literally zero benefit for me.
- AussieWog93 3y ago>With staying sharp in mind, the top genres are consistently puzzle and logic games at 73%, followed by card and tile games (69%), word games (58%), brain games (37%), trivia and traditional board games (32%), and gambling, casino, or poker games (31%). This sounds about right to me. I sell retro games, and we very rarely get customers in the 50+ age bracket (although there are plenty of ~40 year-olds who grew up in the NES era). Half the oldies I know can't get enough of Words with Friends, Spider Solitaire and those weird mobile puzzle games from the Facebook ads, though.
- adamc 3y agoGood, maybe games will start doing a better job with font-scaling. Steam's awful UI would be one place to start. (Yes, it scales on the web, but not in their steam app unless you go to a lot of trouble.) It was a more reasonable limitation 20+ years ago.
- mateuszf 3y agoAlso important for devices with small screens such as Steam Deck. Tried to play Disco Elysium on it, and it's just too hard for me.
- strken 3y agoIt's become more and more strange to me that the gaming market isn't segmented by what they play. I know the article has a little segmentation in it, but it's very strange not to focus on it. I'm in a small gaming clan which plays a (dated) first-person shooter, and our oldest player is in his late 50s. I also know a lot of older people who play mobile games, or online poker, or Wordle. The three groups behave in radically different ways, and trying to understand their consumption is pointless without further segmentation. If you target the mobile gamers with ads about gaming mice they're not going to buy them, our 50-something has approximately zero chance of clicking on an ad for Clash of Clans, and the Wordle players would mostly be insulted by ads for online poker. Same sort of problem as a survey of "readers" has, where fiction and non-fiction are so different that overall stats are misleading.
- strictnein 3y agoJust curious which "dated" FPS you're playing.
- strken 3y agoPlanetside 2 (2012), and formerly the original Planetside (2003). They're both heavily community-oriented games. 2 has gameplay somewhat similar to Battlefield. Edit: To expand on what I mean by community-oriented, here's a genealogy of the different outfits (equivalent of a clan/guild) on one of the Planetside 2 servers: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/887173952080863253/916051461752893500/Connery_Outfit_History.drawio.png https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/887173952080863253/91.... Once you're used to the game mechanics you slowly get drawn into the metagame of complementary or conflicting personalities, outfit history, schisms, cooperation, drama, competitive play, leadership, and so on.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoLol, when you said "dated", I thought something pre-2001...
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- trashface 3y agoI'm almost 50 (and I played a lot of quake 1,2,3 back in the day) but I don't do FPS anymore. Physically I probably overdid it in my youth as now I have some numbness in both index fingers. I also can't hold down the right mouse button constantly as some MMOs require to pivot the camera (WoW being a prominent example, unless they changed it, though there used to be an addon that would do it, anyway I don't play WoW because of the sub.) I don't like to put too much time into gaming these days, I have bursts but then take many months off. OTOH its better than reading the news or pointless or rage-inducing comments on social media, or even here at times. Since I can control the gaming experience I can make it pretty much autopilot so I don't have to worry about blood pressure spikes.
- onlypositive 3y agoTry aoe4 it's an amazing game with a great community.
- verdagon 3y agoFor you or anyone else that has numbness in the hands, a neck x-ray could be enlightening. As we hunch a lot we start to deform the cervical spine into pinching the nerves that run all the way down our arms into our hands. Problems in the neck area often manifest as symptoms anywhere in the hands, arms, and shoulders. Treatment varies, but I personally find a cervical dennerroll quite helpful.
- cityofdelusion 3y agoTwo severe pinches on the cervical spine here. Always start with a physical exam and let the doctor order the appropriate imaging. X-rays will not likely reveal anything going on with the spinal cord itself, that is in the realm of MRI or CT. A good neurosurgeon will know what to order.
- Moru 3y agoI also have problems with games where you have to hold the mouse buttons down extended periods. But there is help to be had, especially if you have problems working [1], but also in general [2]. It's usually a few meetings where you get to do some movement while they feel your joints and then you get some exercises strengthening muscles or stretching sinews. Picking up archery might be good for your shoulders and posture too :-) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_therapy
- eur0pa 3y agoHuh, yeah? Did anyone think the flood of remakes and remasters cash-grabs was a work of love to elevate the original IPs? They're tailored to that part of the market: nostalgic grown-ups with disposable income.
- ketzo 3y agoI genuinely think we’re just at the beginning of the era of remakes and remasters for games. There’s clearly a massive market for stuff like the FF7 / RE4 remakes — not just graphical updates, but total overhauls of beloved classics with modern game design. People will burn out eventually. But if I could play, I dunno, HL2 built in Unreal Engine with a modern team? I’d drop $60 in a heartbeat.
- pugworthy 3y ago62 and spend waaay too much time playing World of Tanks.
- yourmatenate 3y agoAnother 50 year old here. Counting down the days to Zelda Tears Of The Kingdom comes out, playing Horizon Burning Shores in the meantime, having just finished Fallout 4, Witcher 3, and Last Of Us 2 before that. I tend to prefer games with story (and like puzzles so I guess I fit that oldie category), but play Mario Kart, Just Dance etc. regularly with one of my children, and I still play around creating retro 8-bit style arcade and adventure games too. I find gaming and coding to be a way to unwind, my other half works late sometimes and I prefer it to being stuck in front of a television, but I'll take social time over it anytime. Somehow I still find time for reading and working on writing a new novel too.
- glonq 3y ago50 here too. TOTK is the first game I've preordered in at least a decade, which is surprising since BOTW was the first/only Zelda game I ever played. Big open-world games that I can sink my teeth into for a month or two seems to be my favorite genre nowadays.
- PeterStuer 3y agoIn my experience MMO's such as WoW have a very large older playerbase. I can think of 4 reasons: 1. This game has been around for a long time and the players that stuck with it aged with it. 2. It was designed for an much worse Internet and as such more tolerant of lag and packet loss, resulting in a playstyle less dependent on 18yo reflexes. 3. Size and complexity. A wilingness to engage in systems that require time investment and experience often outside of the game is less skewed towards instant gratification that seems to have generational bias. Other examples of also older age skewed games in this respect are Eve and PoE. 4. Cost is often mentioned, but I think this is a minor factor as many other games that skew younger cost about as much to play (season passes) or substantially more (mobile rpg's). The cost presentation (montly subscription) does feel decidedly eldery biased.
- vkou 3y ago5. Nobody starts playing it in 2023. Dated design, inaccessible, janky, new player interest/engagement is near-zero. It keeps going based on retaining old players.
- selfmodruntime 3y agoIt also has a trend on caster classes that has been dated for a decade now: You can‘t move when you cast for a lot of important spells.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoHmm, but 50+ year olds would have been 30+ when it released, and so way too busy with life to suffer through the boring mandatory leveling up to the end of the game, where (I hear), the "real" game starts ?
- Ancapistani 3y agoLOL. I’m 39, and I picked up War Thunder again — from scratch - last November. I generally play for about four hours per day, after my wife and kids are asleep.
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- milchek 3y agoMy father is 71. He plays World of Tanks and CS:GO (against bots only for this one!). He’s always loved games, from the moment he brought home a second hand C64 that we’d play International Soccer or Olympic Games on when I was a kid.
- anyfactor 3y agoNot 50+. I spent my whole teenage life sitting at the back and yelling instructions to my brothers playing game. I didn't get into gaming because I honestly couldn't figure out the dual control of movement and camera angles. And most games doesn't give you the immediate dopamine hit. You have to grind for a while to get that dopamine hit. So, think of chess or any board game. The domain movement is pretty much one dimensional and the dopamine hits (small wins) even tough small but frequent. The rules of the world are limited and there is limited lore. Maybe when we say "gaming" we envision grand action packed games but there are games that are successful because of their absolute simplicity. And hence we have games like candy crush being so popular. Something that replicates the experience of board games while giving you the convinience to get started to without requiring snappy real time mental effort. You keep playing because of a constant and frequent small wins that sometimes result in a big win. Now that I am writong this I am not thinking of chess anymore. This experience replicates gambling. So somewhere between gambling and gaming there lies beautiful concept of a gaming framework that would be perfect for older people.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoAh yeah – when first introducing my mother to a first person (non-shooter) game, I was very surprised just how much trouble she had at moving around with WASD and looking around with the mouse at the same time !
- MonaroVXR 3y agoSame for younger people (under the 30) I experienced this myself.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoI'm not 50+, but I'm nearly 35. The only new games that I've managed to play through in the last 10 years are Super Mario Odyssey, BotW, GTA V, Diablo 3, and Mario Kart 8. Most games lose me within the first 10 minutes. I don't know why but any game that tries to be "cinematic" or has complex controls just loses me immediately. I tried the Witcher but I just couldn't sit through all that dialog. I understand that people want their games to be cinematic, but there should be a market for games where I can just jump in, have 30 minutes of fun by myself, and log off. I don't want to be immersed in another world. I don't want storytelling. I just want to have an hour of fun.
- simongray 3y agoYou're basically me, except I'm a year younger and you need to switch out GTA 5 and Diablo with the Hitman trilogy. I feel exactly the same way as you do about gaming.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoI've liked the Far Cry series recently. The story seems pretty irrelevant - it's just an excuse to gun down random goons in creative ways.
- thih9 3y agoWhat about modern indie titles? They often forgo the bloat and focus on core gameplay. If you like BotW you might like A Short Hike, if you like Diablo3 then Hammerwatch (released a year later) could be fun too, etc.
- gr4yb34rd 3y agoBeing one of those gamers, I do question why a lot of the games targeted at us (looking at you Path of Exile) has to have so much goddamned pointless busy-work clicking. I play a league, then skip a league, which means I skip buying a supporter pack, just because my arthritis can't put up with their bullshit interface year-round.
- keithnz 3y agoI'm 50+, of course we are more represented these days, we are the first gamer kids and we are growing up and still play games!
- wkat4242 3y agoCool! I'm in my late 40s and it feels like I'm only more into gaming now. In the 80s gaming was pretty boring, games with low graphics, lie complexity and no story. These days they're almost interactive movies and I love VR in particular. It's just so amazing. I still see a lot of judgement from more boring people my age though. I mainly hang out with makerspace people and they understand and sometimes even work in the gaming industry. But my old boss used to roll her eyes at us when we were talking about gaming. She was this ultra ambitious pantsuit type though, big family etc. Those people tend to just not understand though they'll happily binge Netflix.
- einpoklum 3y ago"The study found that 45% of people 50-plus are gamers." This made me doubt the validity of the study. Of course there are lots of older gamers, as consoles became popular in the 1980s and PC gaming in the 1990s; but these numbers are bunk. ... Oh. The bottom of the article says: "AARP Research used NORC’s Foresight 50-plus Panel to survey a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults ages 40-plus who own a gaming-eligible device and play video games on that device at least once a month." so maybe 45% of _those_ are gamers?
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- dagorenouf 3y agoI grew up with video games and believed it would be a young people’s thing forever. But now when I talk to young people, many of them don’t play or even know many games, and would rather just watch Netflix or YouTube. However friends of my own age still play games. So maybe video games isn’t actually a thing for young people, but simply a thing for people who were born in the 80-90s. Just like rock’n’roll music. We used to think it was evergreen music for teens… But overtime realized it was simply for people born in the 40s-50s. And now it’s an old people’s thing.
- cultureswitch 3y agoI always find that qualifying anyone who spends an hour a week playing a mobile game a "gamer" is very misleading if we want useful market categories.
- rob74 3y agoAs a soon-to-be "gamer 50-plus" I think it's less that "Gamers 50-plus are [...] embracing gaming because they feel it’s time well spent" - most of them are simply continuing to play games because they have been doing it since their youth and don't see why they should stop at 50.
- keithalewis 3y agoNever underestimate how many 50 year olds can fit into their mom's basement.
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoHa! I'm in my mid 40s and I very rarely spend a few hours or even days to play really old strategy games, mostly by myself though (Master of Magic, Master of Orion II, etc). I feel a bit weird knowing that I still enjoy these.
- ulrashida 3y agoCalling it now: we are going to see more and more accessibility features and difficulty adjusters in games going forward. Not only are the players getting older, but so are the developers who are passionate about making games. From a marketing perspective, relatively simple code changes open up extra markets who are already primed to buy by a lived history of growing up gamers. I'll be damned if my nursing home days are going to be spent without a controller in my hand making my way through the Steam backlog.