Poll of the Day > 9/20 Poll About Being Too Old to Play Games

(+) Yeah! (+)

I thought this was really interesting. Take it from someone who is kind of old at 36 and has played Atari 2600 when I was 4 to PS4 now. I don't think I will ever get too old to play, but as you age your patience and skill wane over time. I used to be the kid everyone at school called to get help with puzzles in the Zelda games. As an adult it is basically impossible to memorize complex games now but also I generally suck when I play a online game like Call of Duty. The other interesting thing is I don't have the patience to try to get too much better. It happens a little over time but I still can't just sit and try to snipe for example. Also as you age you will not have time for these games that require dozens of hours of grinding, nor will you spend 100 hours on a game just to get a platinum trophy. You won't have the time or the interest for either of that. I have put 100 hours into recent games like Metal Gear Solid V and Fallout 4, but you will do that over several months, unless you can really devote lots of adult time for games. Generally I play through two or three modern games a year, and one remaster like the FF10 remake.

Eh, I find my skill to be better than it used to be, when it comes to my old games.

I do suck at stuff like FPS, though. But for RPGs and such, just try to minimise that aspect as much as possible and try to streamline it.
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My taste in games has matured over the years. I don't play near as much 'casual' games as I used to and prefer a meaty RPG. I'm also more picky as to if I'll buy a game at full price or not. I'm 30 at the moment and also don't think I'll ever stop playing video games unless I'm dead.
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yet another bad poll choice. i don't think i will get too old to play but my tastes might change. chose the last one because it fit my response the best.
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sflowers539 posted...

Take it from someone who is kind of old at 36 and has played Atari 2600 when I was 4 to PS4 now. I don't think I will ever get too old to play, but as you age your patience and skill wane over time.

I'd agree with the last part, but I think it ties into the first part as well, because the underlying problem is TIME.

When you were a kid in the NES-era, you had tons of free time, and not as many alternative distractions as kids have now, so spending 10+ hours repeatedly playing the same level over and over again in Ninja Gaiden until you mastered it was something you had ample time (and thus patience) to do.

But then you get older. People get jobs. People get married. People have kids. Because you have money, tons of other activities open up, and because you have responsibilities, sometimes you wind up not being able to sink as much money into buying video games as you used to. The DESIRE to play may still be there, but if you can only squeeze in an hour a night maybe once or twice a week when your wife and kids are asleep, it's going to radically change how you play.

Most of the 40-year olds I know (including myself) who used to be obsessed with video games don't play as much as we used to, partly because we have less free time, and partly because there are always so many other things to do WITH your free time. And when we do play, we're more likely to play games that are easy to master and quick to play, because the massive time investment necessary to play endlessly long games (ie, RPGs that boast 100+ hours of gameplay!) or games that require a TON of trial-and-error skillbuilding (like Dark Souls) means that those sorts of games simply don't appeal.

I tried to get my one friend who has three kids to play Saints Row III a few years ago, and he never really got into it, because he would play in short chunks spaced out over time, so every time he went back to play, he'd already forgotten most of what he learned/skills he'd developed the first time. And more narrative games don't appeal to him either, because by the time he plays he's already forgotten most of what happened the last time he played. Apart from Telltale stuff (where the story is pretty much the entire game, and each episode can be played in only a few hours or so), he just can't get into sweeping narrative arcs or interesting characterization.


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^ I agree with all that, I think the bottom line is always TIME. An interesting dynamic will be what happen to our generation when we retire around 60 and are still healthy and active enough. It won’t be like when we are kids but maybe gameplay hours will increase significantly and be comparable to our young adult years.

It’s also funny the guy mentioned having the time/patience to get through Ninja Guiden and some of the legendary 8 bit challenges. I beat that game and some of the hard core classics back in the day, but even with 300 hours I’m not sure if I could beat the hardest of the hard like Ghosts and Goblins.

Agreed with everyone itt.

It is not like how some kids think, that you magically stop liking the things you used to like when you get older. You just get obligations and games fall by the wayside.

Also, you don't have the time to play all the obscure little things. When you get older you tend to read more reviews and get opinions on what the best stuff out is since you have limited time to play.
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sflowers539 posted...

It’s also funny the guy mentioned having the time/patience to get through Ninja Guiden and some of the legendary 8 bit challenges. I beat that game and some of the hard core classics back in the day, but even with 300 hours I’m not sure if I could beat the hardest of the hard like Ghosts and Goblins.

I've beaten a few games a lot of people always sort of knee-jerk refer to as "impossible" (the ones that always come to mind are 7th Saga on the SNES and Silver Surfer on the NES), but at this point I won't even play Dark Souls, let alone harder "impossible" games (like I Wanna Be the Guy) that all more or less require constant repetition and pattern memorization to beat.

I'm old, my reflexes are slower, and I demand instant gratification, because at any given time, there are literally a dozen other things I can be doing. If a game wants to drip feed me maybe 1 minute's worth of enjoyment in exchange for every 59 minutes worth of frustrating annoyance beforehand, I have zero interest in that game. I'd rather be playing a different game, where I'm getting 60 minutes worth of entertainment. Or watching a movie, or a TV show, or YouTube videos, or listening to music, or reading a book, or going out for a few hours to socialize, or...


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