In Defense of The Aging Gamer

By Shawn White / Sunday, 01 April 2007

The target demographic for video games has always shown that gamers are between their teenage years and up to their quarter-life crisis, age 25. Several studies indicated that video games are less interesting to older audiences for a variety of reasons, but rarely are those reasons explicitly stated. Do adults suddenly lose all interest in video games, or are there reasons behind this change? After all, 25 seems like a relatively young age to stop caring about something so fun. I have reached the end of the industry's target demographic, so it's hard not to think about age and how it affects the industry. Before that is said, let's analyze where a gamer at my age has been for the past 20-something years. Let's see, 20 years ago.  Up, up, um, down, down, left... um... I vividly remember bringing the Nintendo Entertainment System  into our home after my family purchased it. Before this, video games were typically a single screen with no scrolling, no detail, no backgrounds and a few obstacles a dot had to avoid. A game like the 70s classic Pong, now worth as much as a loading screen on today's games, was worth buying an entire console over. Ironically, one had to; the game was its own console and provided built-in controller knobs to move the paddle lines. All of these high-quality graphics were streamed into my television, but not through typical cable hookups of today. Back then, people had to remove two screws called UHF from the back of the television (yes, with a screwdriver) and wedge in two C-shaped metal pieces for connection. Favorites of mine ranged from a frog crossing a street, to leading E.T. home (yes, really), to flying a ship as long as I could before exploding, to a bartending game, to saving the bottom of the screen from a crazy escaped convict throwing bombs. Every game had a single purpose and maintained a simplicity largely ignored by the gaming industry today: high scores and basic replay value. When old-school gamers plugged in the NES, the next generation of graphics emerged in what seemed like life-like realism. In Renegade, you could tell people were angry.  Even with absolutely no story or words on the back of the cartridge's box! Compared to the old half-bit generation, characters finally had complexions and expressions. Tons of colors could be seen everywhere, and the new Zapper gun allowed what seemed to be the first in consumer virtual reality. It's almost sad to think my generation found such realism in those days, but I'm sure the coin will flip and people today will be mocked for thinking these next-gen Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 graphics were real at all. Remember that, all ye who mock my generation. Digression aside, living through all of the consoles since then has been an incredible ride. A little bumpy here and there, but worth it the whole way through. When I thought about the whole demographic dilemma, it seemed that I would be a special case and not lose any interest until I was at least 50 or so. Unfortunately, society contributes a good portion to why older gamers no longer play games: they can't. {page} There may be a great misconception behind older gamers playing games. The reasoning may not be lack of interest any more. Rather, the aging hardcore gamer simply may not have the time to do so. The more demanding a person's life becomes, the longer a person has to dedicate themselves to one or two jobs. Most older gamers don't play games with younger gamers because they need to relax and sleep after a hard day. As our bodies grow older, so does the need to sleep longer to handle six to seven days of work. It's not like gamers refuse to play video games any more, and game developers/publishers have found similar conclusions. PopCap Games, a recreational site dedicated to flash and java renditions of old favorites, conducted a survey last August on their demographic. The results indicated that three out of four gamers in the 2,191 respondents were women, a demographic often forgotten in games. Out of said number, 70 percent of them claimed to be over 40 years old, an age way beyond a console's target demographic. The results also found that 88 percent of players sought to relieve stress by playing these games. See? Older people play games and can accumulate stress, too! Another recurring aging-gamer feeling in consoles is how storylines and plot determine what age range the game focuses on. If there's a lot of blood and gore in today's projects, the game is designed for mature audiences. If a game has a colorful happy-go-lucky story line with no need for experience in real-life situations and entirely whimsical animation, the game is often designed for children. This rarely ever happened in the years from the birth of video games to the Nintendo Entertainment System. Not Mario, nor Duck Hunt, nor Sonic, nor Toejam and Earl, nor Zelda, nor any such games indicated the target audience because there was no reason to separate the young from the old. As time moves on, so does this separation continue to grow. Okay, not EVERYTHING has changed, but you do get the point! Wii Sports became a sought-after game because of four reasons: controls, simplicity, time management and no obvious age range. There is less time needed to learn the buttons without being frustrated, the game's simple nature derives from the simple experiences of real-life sports, each game can last less than five minutes and everyone in the family can sit down together and play a game. While most older gamers don't have two hours to find a princess of Twilight or save the world from an incoming comet, there is time to be fully satisfied with five minutes in Wii Sports or even WarioWare: Smooth Moves. Nintendo deserves applause for overcoming nearly every barrier in the restricting age bracket. By combining practical means with innovative design, entertainment has found a new level of expectation: less need for us to adapt to the controls, and more need for the controls to adapt to us. Sure, not every game has proven to have 1:1 response time and some of the motion controls feel tacked on, but it's a direction never tried for decades. For parents and older gamers, Wii provides fast and accessible gaming. While the Wii is stationed in the home, it can still provide the same entertainment in short spans as the Nintendo DS, minus convenience and portability. Still, my interest in gaming seems to fade with every year. I'm still very excited about how this generation will play out, I even love to study how this generation has changed since our last one, but there's still a lingering feeling and concern that I cannot play the games I loved to play as a kid. I loved role-playing games, but they take too much time and dedication. I immersed myself in MMORPGs, but players working less often than I do grow far more experienced than I can catch up. I loved multiplayer games, but I can't play them as often because high school and college friends have moved away. In the bracket of the aging gamer, Wii's online gaming may be the only solution to have those old friends play the basic, classic games again. If anything, it would be nice to feel young again by beating the living snot out of those friends I grew up with around the consoles. Distance separates us, but lacking online gameplay should not. As an aging hardcore gamer, I would like to play my college-bound brother in another state. I'd love to play my GoldenEye 007 gang in Japan and California. Most of all, I'd love to get the chance to play against all of the gamers visiting The Wiire, sending us fan mail to keep the site going. The little things like these make the experience more about We, rather than simply Wii. The aging hardcore gamer doesn't need high-definition graphics, superior sound, technical specs or a thousand peripherals. The aging gamer needs to feel young again. Minus the homework. Be sure to also read In Defense of The Younger Gamer by Senior Editor Shawn White, co-released with this article.