GRcade

Do you think you'll reach an age where you stop playing videogames?

For this "jawa asks..." event we have teamed up with a famous GRcadian, Gemini73, in order to get people thinking about videogaming and age. Historically, of course, it was a seemingly common perception that anyone over 18 "shouldn't be playing games" but nowdays maybe thoughts have changed.

Are you planning to stop playing at, say, 40? Will you still have the urge at 60? Is age a factor at all?

Please vote for the option which is the closest match to your own thinking. Oh! And why not also post about the age you started playing videogames? Perhaps you could also share examples of things people have said to you about "gaming at your age". Let's chew over this!

Thanks to Gem for instigating this thought-provoking - and really rather exciting - discussion. And for making me feel like an old git .

If they remain something that I am capable of doing in later years then I will continue to play them, and in fact even if modern gaming has moved to some kind of hyper kinetic VR system where my aging body is unable to keep up with the demands I would still just play retro stuff.

i cant stop they keep making more

I'm reaching that point now if I'm being honest. It's not because I think I'm too old, it's not even because of anything in particular with the gaming industry. For some reason (and it's not anything I can explain or put my finger on) gaming just doesn't excite me much any more. There's nothing really on the horizon that I'm looking forward to. Even last gen (PS4/Xbox One) didn't do a lot for me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the handful of games I bought, Ghost of Tsushima was sublime and Shenmue 3 was (for me) worth the wait. But I bought next to nothing compared to the previous generations. I could have probably waited until the end of tat gen and just bought all the games in one go tbh.

It's a bit sad really, I don't know where that sense of excitement and buzz has gone, but a big part of my life just seems to be fading. I've been gaming since I was probably 4 or 5 or my cousins original Atari, through the Spectrum years, the highs, lows and highs again of Sega , right through to the PS4. Right now I can't see me getting a PS5. Maybe if a Ghost of Tsushima sequel came out? But then its hard to justify a console for one game.

I still get some enjoyment from some retro gaming so maybe that's where my future lies? I'm gamings past.

Oh, I was regularly told I was too old for gaming once I hit 20, often told to get a life. Not by my family though, who have always been supportive of my hobbies

I don't really see the relevance of age, some sort of hangover from the "games are for kids!" era of thought?

Books, TV, movies, games, etc are all just entertainment. People don't really grow out of wanting to be entertained and so the number of candles on your birthday cake isn't a factor in whether you play games.

I suppose there's a time when I'll be too physically weak to use a force feedback wheel for racing, but I can always which to *vomits blood* A control pad.

I'll be playing games in some form till the end.

I started playing videogames at around 12 on the school computers (Acorn BBC Bs ) but only regularly once we had our first computer (Commodore Vic-20; 3.5k RAM and 20-character width display ) when I was 13. Most kids at school who liked the computers got beaten up but I got away with that 'cos I could chat to the thugs about football. Phew!

I've played games pretty much continuously since then albeit with some breaks. In my early 20s I was sampling beers and playing the field* and gaming took a backseat but, generally, I've always been into them. Inn the 80s gaming was very much seen as a geeky hobby but once we hit the mid-90s and PlayStation launched, things changed. "Cool" people saw Sony's weird ads and could relate to things like snorting cocaine (thanks, Wipeout!) and then the laddish gaming mags of the early 2000s brought in a wider audience, with scantily-clad girls often draped over PS2s in articles. Gaming was mainstream and a wee bit sexy!

Nowdays it feels like videogaming is, generally, a reasonably acceptable pursuit in the eyes of younger generations. For better or worse, it's a mass market leisure industry which big business took over long ago. I do kinda miss the "niche", "strange", more compact world of 80s computer gaming but there are benefits from having the industry grow into the larger world it is today.

I've always been rubbish at games but I still enjoy them; these days I prefer large, openworld "do what you want" games like Fallout 76 and No Man's Sky but I also like the simpler, pick-up-and-play challenges such as Grindstone. None of my IRL pals of a similar age really play videogames but I've no plans to stop. Let's hope we're all chatting here well into our old age .

* Absolute drinking lightweight and definitely not getting anywhere in the field; Hyrule or otherwise.

I still enjoy games, but my patience for them wears increasingly thin, and I barely have time to play as it is. Difficult to say how I'll feel in 20 years or so, but I imagine I'll always dip in and out, especially for retro games. The direction of gaming in general over the last few years is moving further and further away from what I like and enjoy about the hobby, so the PS4 generation could well be my last, with perhaps me just having a PC and my old consoles to dip in and out of when I feel like it, but that sounds quite nice I think.

jawa_ wrote: Inn the 80s gaming was very much seen as a geeky hobby but once we hit the mid-90s and PlayStation launched, things changed.

I think people underestimate/forget how much Sega and the Megadrive altered perceptions of gaming. Sure, the PlayStation made games mainstream but I think the Megadrive laid a lot of the groundwork for gaming as "cool" and not just for kids. Not just in America but over here as well

I'm the age that Alan Partridge was when he pierced his foot on a spike. If I was ever going to stop, I think it would have happened by now.

Outrunner wrote:

jawa_ wrote: Inn the 80s gaming was very much seen as a geeky hobby but once we hit the mid-90s and PlayStation launched, things changed.

I think people underestimate/forget how much Sega and the Megadrive altered perceptions of gaming. Sure, the PlayStation made games mainstream but I think the Megadrive laid a lot of the groundwork for gaming as "cool" and not just for kids. Not just in America but over here as well

Cyber razor cut?

There's still very much a LOL U STILL PLAY GAMES?!?! attitude with some people. I gernally find if i say i play a lot of games, most will look at me like I've just asked for naked pictures of their kids, but if I tell them I do a lot of SIM racing, they tend to ask about it. Maybe it's that more real world aspect they can related to, I don't know.

At a second round job interview (which I went on to get I might add) I was asked what I did for hobbies, and I told this guy about my music and games. "Oh yeah, I used to love playing on my ps2, but then I just thought it was time to grow up you know?". He was a vegan. banana split.

Victor Mildew wrote:He was a vegan.

Worse than Hitler

I hope not.


Mario Kart with the lads in the OAP home

Tomous wrote:I hope not.


Mario Kart with the lads in the OAP home

Playing it for real in your motorised wheelchairs, chucking mashed banana at each other.

Tomous wrote:I hope not.


Mario Kart with the lads in the OAP home

I would love that so much!

"Who launched that blue shell?"

"What?"

"WHO LAUNCHED THAT BLUE SHELL?"

"New well?"

"BLUE SHELL!"

"I don't know where I am"

Jenuall wrote:If they remain something that I am capable of doing in later years then I will continue to play them, and in fact even if modern gaming has moved to some kind of hyper kinetic VR system where my aging body is unable to keep up with the demands I would still just play retro stuff.

I think that's still one of the great things about gaming, Jen; change. Things develop and alter at such a pace... it's pretty exciting!

shy guy 64 wrote:i cant stop they keep making more

. I can see this situation continuing, shy guy!

Outrunner wrote:I'm reaching that point now if I'm being honest... For some reason (and it's not anything I can explain or put my finger on) gaming just doesn't excite me much any more...

I feel that this does happen to many of us at points, Outrunner. Over the years I've had breaks from gaming; in my early 20s I recall a time of not gaming at all for about six months - I just lost a bit of interest for a while. Gradually the will returned and this situation (albeit fir shorter periods) has happened since, too. Maybe take a break!

Moggy wrote:...Books, TV, movies, games, etc are all just entertainment. People don't really grow out of wanting to be entertained and so the number of candles on your birthday cake isn't a factor in whether you play games.

Truth, Moggy! In my mind I kinda think that gaming could just continue on; if you enjoy it, why stop?

Victor Mildew wrote:I suppose there's a time when I'll be too physically weak to use a force feedback wheel for racing, but I can always switch to *vomits blood* A control pad...

.

Outrunner wrote:...I think people underestimate/forget how much Sega and the Megadrive altered perceptions of gaming. Sure, the PlayStation made games mainstream but I think the Megadrive laid a lot of the groundwork for gaming as "cool" and not just for kids. Not just in America but over here as well

rinks wrote:Cyber razor cut?

Yeah, you're right, the MD and SNES did bring in a larger audience; younger kids grew up with these systems and so their parents got a better awareness of gaming. Thinking about it, yes... some of Sega's advertising was almost a forerunner of Sony's work a few years later, in terms of a "disruptive" approach and "cooler" messaging. I guess my feeling about the PlayStation is driven by me being at work in a bank at the time and barely anyone mentioned games... until a growing number of people (generally younger and mid-20s) started getting into PlayStation. Over the course of a few years it felt like gaming had become "cool"; generally still frowned upon by older people but embraced by the younger generations.

Tomous wrote:I hope not.


Mario Kart with the lads in the OAP home

YES, Tom! Nintendo might have introduced voice chat by that point .

I don’t think me and my girlfriend are going to have kids, which means I’ll still have free time and a bit spare cash to my name, so why not? In a couple of respects I think that games are getting better than ever, so why not keep rolling with it.

I think I’ll most likely be gaming until the very end although I feel that a lot of what’ popular today just doesn’t chime with me. I thought about this after putting together my top five games of the last generation on here and I think I picked Overcooked. I loved Overcooked but i guess it says something about my relationship with gaming these days.

I would love for a game to make me feel how I felt when I first played Super Mario Galaxy 2 or Tomb Raider or Burnout 2 or GoldenEye but that was a different time in my life and probably isn’t going to happen as often.

I guess it’s a bit like drinking, it’s so good at first and then you spend the rest of the time drinking more and more to try and get that feeling back again but never quite managing it. So yeah, the gaming and the alcohol dependency are here to stay.

I don't have as much free time for gaming as I did 10 years ago, and I imagine in 10 years time I'll have even less. But I can't see myself reaching a point where I'm not interested in video games at all.