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How old are you? (take 2)


Daddicus.6128

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The lower number of 10-19 respondents likely has something to do with this:

@Rasimir.6239 said:Not everyone comes to the forum. In my family, three of us are playing GW2, mostly on a daily basis. I'm the only one that posts on (or even reads the) forums. There's an age difference of 36 years between the oldest and youngest of us, so no matter where I put my vote, the outcome will not reflect the whole household but only one part of it.

Btw, in my (casual) guild there is an age difference of 53 years between the oldest and youngest member ;) .

Thinking about the type of behaviour I see on forums compared to Facebook, it seems plausible to me that teenage and younger players don't use forums these days. Most of us who are fond of forums could remember using them for at least 10 years (and maybe some even remember newsgroups).

Ironically, the game chat format is based on IRC, which is older still.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Laurie.1698" said:odd, I saw someone saying "if you were born before 1980 then you think MMO's are childish" I was born way before 80's, in fact, graduated high school in the early 80's. I played Atari, heck I even played pong on the TV when that was a great thing. There were no computers in my school at all, not the library, not anywhere. Most of early college too. I am and have been a server engineer for over 20yrs now. I played Daggerfall for hours on end, UO (Ultima Online), I love the MMO genre and came from the early days. I don't think its childish at all. "I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.' C.S. Lewis. Being female, it was a little bit more difficult back then to not be labeled "receptionist" or things like that, and gaming and computer work? well, sometimes we were not as welcome as we are now in this time period. I am glad for that. I will always have fun in MMO's, I love the time I get to spend having fun with computers instead of work on them all the time. Staves off the burn out and always brings loud laughter and big smiles when I get to play.

If you are going to respond to something I am saying, please quote me directly so I am notified. Anyway, I am speaking in generalities. If you are looking for exceptions you'll find plenty, but when looking at the market as a whole the exceptions aren't as important as the mean flow. There is a certain age window in which our expectations are normalized, and if we aren't in the window then we aren't going to get it. I'm an obtuse person who has experiences in a lot of places, and I can definitely tell you that outside of our current age demographic and closely knit social circle, things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Inhumans are the silliest things ever.

As for whether or not it is childish, that is a much bigger debate. My short answer is yes.

One sentence did not require a quote in my opinion...I'm sorry I responded and used one sentence of your previous message. I don't follow marketing nor do I care to, I'll leave that to the already over-saturated "marketing" field. My age has not normalized, nor has it changed my point of view. My circle consists of 20 somethings to 80 somethings, sometimes younger depending on who's kids are there when I visit and I guess I don't have a demographic circle nor a close knit social circle of any type of age demographic at all. Nothing is childish to me...life is too short to do that to myself. I don't debate. Its only my opinion. I have lived in 17 countries, 40 states, I contract for myself installing servers and networks for hotels, businesses, companies. I guess I will never fit anyone's demographic. I don't have a window, a door, or a circle. I have never had what some consider a "normal" life nor do I want to have one. Black swans should always be considered when observing anything, however, their opinions are just that, opinions. I'll leave it at that .

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@Manasa Devi.7958 said:

@Endless Soul.5178 said:49 here. I still remember when my mom brought home our first video game...PONG.

I played Pong on the deluxe cocktail table version in a hotel lounge till my eyes went square during one particularly rainy holiday when I was young. There was little else to do, Space Invaders hadn't come out yet.

Oy! I REMEMBER those! I had forgotten all about them until your post.

Yeah, I played one they had on campus, I think. It was always crashing, but it was almost the size of a ping-pong table. (Well, to my memory, anyhow!)

Thanks for the memory boost!

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Laurie.1698" said:odd, I saw someone saying "if you were born before 1980 then you think MMO's are childish" I was born way before 80's, in fact, graduated high school in the early 80's. I played Atari, heck I even played pong on the TV when that was a great thing. There were no computers in my school at all, not the library, not anywhere. Most of early college too. I am and have been a server engineer for over 20yrs now. I played Daggerfall for hours on end, UO (Ultima Online), I love the MMO genre and came from the early days. I don't think its childish at all. "I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.' C.S. Lewis. Being female, it was a little bit more difficult back then to not be labeled "receptionist" or things like that, and gaming and computer work? well, sometimes we were not as welcome as we are now in this time period. I am glad for that. I will always have fun in MMO's, I love the time I get to spend having fun with computers instead of work on them all the time. Staves off the burn out and always brings loud laughter and big smiles when I get to play.

If you are going to respond to something I am saying, please quote me directly so I am notified. Anyway, I am speaking in generalities. If you are looking for exceptions you'll find plenty, but when looking at the market as a whole the exceptions aren't as important as the mean flow. There is a certain age window in which our expectations are normalized, and if we aren't in the window then we aren't going to get it. I'm an obtuse person who has experiences in a lot of places, and I can definitely tell you that outside of our current age demographic and closely knit social circle, things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Inhumans are the silliest things ever.

As for whether or not it is childish, that is a much bigger debate. My short answer is yes.

Do you have any evidence for your assertion? Because if I'm seeing anything here in this thread, it's that there are quite a few of us born before 1980 who are playing this game. I'm not saying that expectations don't get normalized, or that if you miss a trend when it's at critical mass, you probably won't ever "get" it-- heck, Twitter's beyond me even though I first signed up for an account when it was in beta.

Editing: Not trying to start an argument, BTW. I'm honestly curious. I've been reading a lot about game design and theory lately. Gaming psychology is fascinating :) Marketing can be too.

Personally, I'm in my mid-40s. I should have been into arcade games, etc., but I had horrible reflexes when I was a kid. I got into gaming when my husband dropped a copy of Dungeon Siege in my lap sometime in 2004. I got addicted to the world of Aranna, then KOTORs I & 2, then Dragon Age: Origins and the rest of the Bioware stable, including SWTOR. It seems like single player, party-based, non-nostalgic games are dying (I loved you, ME:A!). MMORPGs are the closest thing out there to what I enjoy playing, so here I am!

I'd kill for a tactical pause sometimes, though.

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@"juhani.5361" said:Do you have any evidence for your assertion? Because if I'm seeing anything here in this thread, it's that there are quite a few of us born before 1980 who are playing this game. I'm not saying that expectations don't get normalized, or that if you miss a trend when it's at critical mass, you probably won't ever "get" it-- heck, Twitter's beyond me even though I first signed up for an account when it was in beta.

Editing: Not trying to start an argument, BTW. I'm honestly curious. I've been reading a lot about game design and theory lately. Gaming psychology is fascinating :) Marketing can be too.

Personally, I'm in my mid-40s. I should have been into arcade games, etc., but I had horrible reflexes when I was a kid. I got into gaming when my husband dropped a copy of Dungeon Siege in my lap sometime in 2004. I got addicted to the world of Aranna, then KOTORs I & 2, then Dragon Age: Origins and the rest of the Bioware stable, including SWTOR. It seems like single player, party-based, non-nostalgic games are dying (I loved you, ME:A!). MMORPGs are the closest thing out there to what I enjoy playing, so here I am!

I'd kill for a tactical pause sometimes, though.

If you mean "Do I have scientific studies on hand specifically to prove to these things" evidence? No. I don't catalogue everything I see in life. But if you want evidence, just look at the poll results. I can go dig for them, though, as these are not uncommon sentiments that I am echoing.

I am partly paraphrasing a section of Malcom Gladwells Outliers: The Story of Success, particularly the portion that goes over how 14 of the 75 wealthiest people were born between 1831 and 1840. The reason why is because in the 1870s there was massive economic restructuring in the United States, and everyone who was born before that period weren't capable of handling the paradigm shift.

To make a comparison, I'm going to take Yu-gi-oh as an example. It is a card game that was popularized when 4kids translated and adopted over a related television show in 2001. The card game itself was released in 2002, following the success of the important cartoon during the Saturday Morning block. To want to play the game you had to have passing familiarity with the show, which would put you squarely in its young boys and teenager demographic. The exact range is unknown, but I'm going to estimate that it is between 8 and 16, as younger kids would have trouble understanding what is going on, and juniors in highschool were "too old for it" to garner interest. In 2002, there wasn't that much alternative media out there. We were in the Playstation 2 era of gaming and most of the internet looked like privately owned geocities pages. Having pieces of cardboard with pictures of dragons on them was still a "thing". But, from beyond that date, several things happened.

  • In 2003, Call of Duty and similar games revolutionized the online gaming scene.
  • In 2004 World of Warcraft hit, essentially creating its own market.
  • In 2005, Youtube was launched.
  • In 2007 the I-phone was dropped.
  • The Saturday morning cartoon block vanished completely.
  • Easily streamed shows meant that production companies no longer had absolute control over what cartoons to import. 4kids went belly up, and aside from a few dubs most people just stream whatever show they want to watch.
  • Action cartoons and cartoons with long running plots lost popularity, replaced by short run episodic quips (I.E. Teen Titans -> Teen Titans GO!, Ben 10 -> Ben 10 2016, etc).

Every single thing that was in place to make Yu-gi-oh a successful business venture is gone now. Either you were in the age range where you watched the show and became interested in the card game, or you weren't and you missed the boat. Of course there are going to be exceptions, such as parents who watched the show with their kids, or gaming store owners who got into it, or imports from older games. But the general trend is pretty obvious as a whole. If you look too hard at the exception, you'll miss the forest for the trees. Any tree in a forest is going to have its own tale, but there's still a forest all around it.

The aging hobbies issue is not something that I see in one place. It is something I see in every place. In CCGs, Yu-gi-oh, Magic: The Gathering, Cardfight! Vanguard, all are suffering from the same issue of low sales due to an aging playerbase. Even the gaming juggernaut of WoW is facing a similar problem. There's even fears that the console gaming market might die off, though evidence for it is inconclusive due to wide market movements. Do you like comic books? Well, that medium is dying off, in spite of all the success that their IPs have in other departments. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn't just because Marvel's comic division was taken over by far-left extremists. When it comes to MMOs in general, there is some debate out there on what the normal values should be, since there is no true MMO market. Each game creates its own market. But, it is hard to debate the fact that numbers aren't nearly as high as they were in the past.

These are all consumption hobbies that I am familiar with, as I am 1/8th couch potato by blood. But it hurts production hobbies, too. But are there as many domestic gardens? Seamstresses? Model makers? Bee Keepers? Mike Rowe talks about The Skills Gap a lot, referencing a change in values of western civilization away from tradesmithing and towards entertainment and academics. I don't have much personal experience on these things, as I am naturally averse to motion, but growing up I noticed a distinct lack of interest in any of these topics among my peers. Hard to imagine, but there was a time when people used to make clothes for fun.

The concept is really simple to grasp overall. I'm surprised I am getting so much resistance to the notion. As much of a nerd I am, I can't help but have those tiny moments of clarity where I look down from above at all this and see how silly everything is. When I watched the Inhumans premier, there was a moment where I legit felt like a bad person for bothering to even care about the show. Everything in the Inhumans lore is so discordant and stupid that I had a "what the hell am I doing here?" moment while watching it. I'll have to disagree with C.S. Lewis here, and say that self-analysis is a critical part of maturation. Being unaware is a characteristic of youth, and not a good characteristic at that.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"juhani.5361" said:Do you have any evidence for your assertion? Because if I'm seeing anything here in this thread, it's that there are quite a few of us born before 1980 who are playing this game. I'm not saying that expectations don't get normalized, or that if you miss a trend when it's at critical mass, you probably won't ever "get" it-- heck, Twitter's beyond me even though I first signed up for an account when it was in beta.

Editing: Not trying to start an argument, BTW. I'm honestly curious. I've been reading a lot about game design and theory lately. Gaming psychology is fascinating :) Marketing can be too.

Personally, I'm in my mid-40s. I should have been into arcade games, etc., but I had horrible reflexes when I was a kid. I got into gaming when my husband dropped a copy of Dungeon Siege in my lap sometime in 2004. I got addicted to the world of Aranna, then KOTORs I & 2, then Dragon Age: Origins and the rest of the Bioware stable, including SWTOR. It seems like single player, party-based, non-nostalgic games are dying (I loved you, ME:A!). MMORPGs are the closest thing out there to what I enjoy playing, so here I am!

I'd kill for a tactical pause sometimes, though.

If you mean "Do I have scientific studies on hand specifically to prove to these things" evidence? No. I don't catalogue everything I see in life. But if you want evidence, just look at the poll results. I can go dig for them, though, as these are not uncommon sentiments that I am echoing.

I am partly paraphrasing a section of Malcom Gladwells
Outliers: The Story of Success,
particularly the portion that goes over how 14 of the 75 wealthiest people were born between 1831 and 1840. The reason why is because in the 1870s there was massive economic restructuring in the United States, and everyone who was born before that period weren't capable of handling the paradigm shift.

To make a comparison, I'm going to take Yu-gi-oh as an example. It is a card game that was popularized when 4kids translated and adopted over a related television show in 2001. The card game itself was released in 2002, following the success of the important cartoon during the Saturday Morning block. To want to play the game you had to have passing familiarity with the show, which would put you squarely in its young boys and teenager demographic. The exact range is unknown, but I'm going to estimate that it is between 8 and 16, as younger kids would have trouble understanding what is going on, and juniors in highschool were "too old for it" to garner interest. In 2002, there wasn't that much alternative media out there. We were in the Playstation 2 era of gaming and most of the internet looked like privately owned geocities pages. Having pieces of cardboard with pictures of dragons on them was still a "thing". But, from beyond that date, several things happened.
  • In 2003, Call of Duty and similar games revolutionized the online gaming scene.
  • In 2004 World of Warcraft hit, essentially creating its own market.
  • In 2005, Youtube was launched.
  • In 2007 the I-phone was dropped.
  • The Saturday morning cartoon block vanished completely.
  • Easily streamed shows meant that production companies no longer had absolute control over what cartoons to import. 4kids went belly up, and aside from a few dubs most people just stream whatever show they want to watch.
  • Action cartoons and cartoons with long running plots lost popularity, replaced by short run episodic quips (I.E. Teen Titans -> Teen Titans GO!, Ben 10 -> Ben 10 2016, etc).

Every single thing that was in place to make Yu-gi-oh a successful business venture is gone now. Either you were in the age range where you watched the show and became interested in the card game, or you weren't and you missed the boat. Of course there are going to be exceptions, such as parents who watched the show with their kids, or gaming store owners who got into it, or imports from older games. But the general trend is pretty obvious as a whole. If you look too hard at the exception, you'll miss the forest for the trees. Any tree in a forest is going to have its own tale, but there's still a forest all around it.

The aging hobbies issue is not something that I see in one place. It is something I see in every place. In CCGs, Yu-gi-oh, Magic: The Gathering, Cardfight! Vanguard, all are suffering from the same issue of
due to
Even the gaming juggernaut of WoW is facing a
There's even fears that the console gaming market might die off, though evidence for it is inconclusive due to wide market movements. Do you like comic books? Well, that
in spite of all the success that their IPs have in other departments. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn't just because Marvel's comic division was taken over by far-left extremists. When it comes to MMOs in general, there is some debate out there on what the normal values should be, since there is no true MMO market. Each game creates its own market. But, it is hard to debate the fact that numbers aren't nearly as high as they were in the past.

These are all consumption hobbies that I am familiar with, as I am 1/8th couch potato by blood. But it hurts production hobbies, too. But are there as many domestic gardens? Seamstresses? Model makers? Bee Keepers? Mike Rowe talks about
a lot, referencing a change in values of western civilization away from tradesmithing and towards entertainment and academics. I don't have much personal experience on these things, as I am naturally averse to motion, but growing up I noticed a distinct lack of interest in any of these topics among my peers. Hard to imagine, but there was a time when people used to make clothes
for fun
.

The concept is really simple to grasp overall. I'm surprised I am getting so much resistance to the notion. As much of a nerd I am, I can't help but have those tiny moments of clarity where I look down from above at all this and see how silly everything is. When I watched the Inhumans premier, there was a moment where I legit felt like a bad person for bothering to even care about the show. Everything in the Inhumans lore is so discordant and stupid that I had a "what the hell am I doing here?" moment while watching it. I'll have to disagree with C.S. Lewis here, and say that self-analysis is a critical part of maturation. Being unaware is a characteristic of youth, and not a good characteristic at that.

You know, I don't think I've seen that Player One blog before (reference to Ready, Player One? Just wondering-- loved that book). I'll have to give it a closer look. Most of my MMO news these days comes from Massively. I'm wondering if there are other causes to MMO population shifts. The market, if anything, seems to be saturated now with a billion new games either in development or early testing. Not to mention, the mobile market might well be chipping away at traditional MMOs. I've played a couple of them-- games like Lineage 2 are close to full-featured on Android. BDO, Blade & Soul, and a few others seem to be taking up a lot of slack from aging Western MMOs. It doesn't help that MMOs keep adopting increasingly predatory monetization practices-- part of the reason I'm here now instead of playing SWTOR ;) I don't think the market has collapsed, exactly, but probably has dispersed among the many options out there. MOBAs and Battle Royale games are chipping away at the audience too.

Anyway, you've given me a few thoughts for future research. I love following demographic trends :) And I'm dying to know the truth.

I don't think you're wrong on an overall conceptual level. I think your particulars might be off a bit, however, about gaming or the age of the overall demographic. Gaming in general has a lot of room for expansion: female gamers are a growing demographic. Unfortunately, the industry as a whole seems to be going out of its way to alienate us.

Anyway, FWIW, enjoy what you enjoy. Don't let anything stop you, especially those "what the hell am I doing here?" thoughts. Sometimes you need your Inhumans or your Bollywood or your K-pop or K-dramas <---sorry, personal add there.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"juhani.5361" said:Do you have any evidence for your assertion? Because if I'm seeing anything here in this thread, it's that there are quite a few of us born before 1980 who are playing this game. I'm not saying that expectations don't get normalized, or that if you miss a trend when it's at critical mass, you probably won't ever "get" it-- heck, Twitter's beyond me even though I first signed up for an account when it was in beta.

Editing: Not trying to start an argument, BTW. I'm honestly curious. I've been reading a lot about game design and theory lately. Gaming psychology is fascinating :) Marketing can be too.

Personally, I'm in my mid-40s. I should have been into arcade games, etc., but I had horrible reflexes when I was a kid. I got into gaming when my husband dropped a copy of Dungeon Siege in my lap sometime in 2004. I got addicted to the world of Aranna, then KOTORs I & 2, then Dragon Age: Origins and the rest of the Bioware stable, including SWTOR. It seems like single player, party-based, non-nostalgic games are dying (I loved you, ME:A!). MMORPGs are the closest thing out there to what I enjoy playing, so here I am!

I'd kill for a tactical pause sometimes, though.

If you mean "Do I have scientific studies on hand specifically to prove to these things" evidence? No. I don't catalogue everything I see in life. But if you want evidence, just look at the poll results. I can go dig for them, though, as these are not uncommon sentiments that I am echoing.

I am partly paraphrasing a section of Malcom Gladwells
Outliers: The Story of Success,
particularly the portion that goes over how 14 of the 75 wealthiest people were born between 1831 and 1840. The reason why is because in the 1870s there was massive economic restructuring in the United States, and everyone who was born before that period weren't capable of handling the paradigm shift.

To make a comparison, I'm going to take Yu-gi-oh as an example. It is a card game that was popularized when 4kids translated and adopted over a related television show in 2001. The card game itself was released in 2002, following the success of the important cartoon during the Saturday Morning block. To want to play the game you had to have passing familiarity with the show, which would put you squarely in its young boys and teenager demographic. The exact range is unknown, but I'm going to estimate that it is between 8 and 16, as younger kids would have trouble understanding what is going on, and juniors in highschool were "too old for it" to garner interest. In 2002, there wasn't that much alternative media out there. We were in the Playstation 2 era of gaming and most of the internet looked like privately owned geocities pages. Having pieces of cardboard with pictures of dragons on them was still a "thing". But, from beyond that date, several things happened.
  • In 2003, Call of Duty and similar games revolutionized the online gaming scene.
  • In 2004 World of Warcraft hit, essentially creating its own market.
  • In 2005, Youtube was launched.
  • In 2007 the I-phone was dropped.
  • The Saturday morning cartoon block vanished completely.
  • Easily streamed shows meant that production companies no longer had absolute control over what cartoons to import. 4kids went belly up, and aside from a few dubs most people just stream whatever show they want to watch.
  • Action cartoons and cartoons with long running plots lost popularity, replaced by short run episodic quips (I.E. Teen Titans -> Teen Titans GO!, Ben 10 -> Ben 10 2016, etc).

Every single thing that was in place to make Yu-gi-oh a successful business venture is gone now. Either you were in the age range where you watched the show and became interested in the card game, or you weren't and you missed the boat. Of course there are going to be exceptions, such as parents who watched the show with their kids, or gaming store owners who got into it, or imports from older games. But the general trend is pretty obvious as a whole. If you look too hard at the exception, you'll miss the forest for the trees. Any tree in a forest is going to have its own tale, but there's still a forest all around it.

The aging hobbies issue is not something that I see in one place. It is something I see in every place. In CCGs, Yu-gi-oh, Magic: The Gathering, Cardfight! Vanguard, all are suffering from the same issue of
due to
Even the gaming juggernaut of WoW is facing a
There's even fears that the console gaming market might die off, though evidence for it is inconclusive due to wide market movements. Do you like comic books? Well, that
in spite of all the success that their IPs have in other departments. Contrary to popular opinion, it isn't just because Marvel's comic division was taken over by far-left extremists. When it comes to MMOs in general, there is some debate out there on what the normal values should be, since there is no true MMO market. Each game creates its own market. But, it is hard to debate the fact that numbers aren't nearly as high as they were in the past.

These are all consumption hobbies that I am familiar with, as I am 1/8th couch potato by blood. But it hurts production hobbies, too. But are there as many domestic gardens? Seamstresses? Model makers? Bee Keepers? Mike Rowe talks about
a lot, referencing a change in values of western civilization away from tradesmithing and towards entertainment and academics. I don't have much personal experience on these things, as I am naturally averse to motion, but growing up I noticed a distinct lack of interest in any of these topics among my peers. Hard to imagine, but there was a time when people used to make clothes
for fun
.

The concept is really simple to grasp overall. I'm surprised I am getting so much resistance to the notion. As much of a nerd I am, I can't help but have those tiny moments of clarity where I look down from above at all this and see how silly everything is. When I watched the Inhumans premier, there was a moment where I legit felt like a bad person for bothering to even care about the show. Everything in the Inhumans lore is so discordant and stupid that I had a "what the hell am I doing here?" moment while watching it. I'll have to disagree with C.S. Lewis here, and say that self-analysis is a critical part of maturation. Being unaware is a characteristic of youth, and not a good characteristic at that.

A lot has changed in the last 10 years on the web as well. There's FB whose ultimate goal is to consume as much of its user's time as possible for top dollar ad serving. Then there's declining quality of Google search results to favor big brands that pay top dollar (pay AdWords, get a bonus free organic listing) instead of passionate indie owned websites. Lastly, Amazon who wants to control all of the worlds commerce, from distribution of physical and digital goods to manufacturing.

In the end, consumers lose when there's large market consolidation.

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I am not only 50 (51 in about 2 weeks) but I am also female. When the kids were younger (they are 31 and 30) we had 3 computers networked in the house so that we could play games together. Now we not only game long distance at times with them but we also game with the granddaughter who will 11 in a week.

So in effect I am what some would consider an anomaly being both 'old' and 'female'. I have found that I am not that much of an anomaly, there are more of us old and female gamers out there than most would think there are.

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@"PyrateSilly.4710" said:I am not only 50 (51 in about 2 weeks) but I am also female. When the kids were younger (they are 31 and 30) we had 3 computers networked in the house so that we could play games together. Now we not only game long distance at times with them but we also game with the granddaughter who will 11 in a week.

So in effect I am what some would consider an anomaly being both 'old' and 'female'. I have found that I am not that much of an anomaly, there are more of us old and female gamers out there than most would think there are.

My grandparents also discovered gaming. They play "Dr. Mario" on two gameboys they bought- Maximum level or Columns versus each other for hours. They hooked up that old MegaDrive on their 40" SONY TV just to play that game. It's ready all the time, when I just say "Columns?" someone in the house of them yells "Me!".

It's indeed not uncommon. They are 70+. Not sure why they do that, they start every puzzle game at maximum difficulty and speed and it sounds like hardcore techno when the bricks drop on-screen. Now they have a tablet and play Flash games. But man, in the 90s, touching the computer made my grandma act like it's going immediately implode her... No she walks into the living room from the kitchen with the 80s gas stove, sits down, and plays Gameboy. Time changes...

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@PyrateSilly.4710 said:I am not only 50 (51 in about 2 weeks) but I am also female. When the kids were younger (they are 31 and 30) we had 3 computers networked in the house so that we could play games together. Now we not only game long distance at times with them but we also game with the granddaughter who will 11 in a week.

So in effect I am what some would consider an anomaly being both 'old' and 'female'. I have found that I am not that much of an anomaly, there are more of us old and female gamers out there than most would think there are.

Actually, you're not as anomalous as you think. The majority of what are commonly referred to as casual gamers are female. Also, the age of casual gamers skews older. You're probably still within one deviation of the mean.

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My mother is over 60 and loves to play Tetris in all forms and a revised Boulder Dash clone on a tablet she recently got as a gift, but she has no interest in other games. My father is close to 70 and surfs several football and terrible folkmusic sites on the internet like a pro. :)

I myself prefer being a nerd to holler around in the living room and get drunk while watching football or other "manly" hobbies. A whole football game is a very boring thing, from 90 minutes I am probably entertained for a maximum of 10 minutes. Boxing and MMA are just boring from the start, I am more entertained by professional wrestling. I like Snooker and Darts because these are manly, even gentlemanly things and don´t involve to scream like a madman or babble incoherently when the ball leaves the field.I also have moments where i think that I am too old for RPGing, but other men around my age play poker with their friends or buy a fast car for their waning libido. Playing lies in our nature, people learn to supress it when they grow older and most rediscover it when they do not work anymore and have to think about reputation and serious business. Working hard is a rather recent development for having a healthy self esteem. If you worked hard in ancient Greece or Rome and did not have time to visit the circus for a brutal entertainment, show of your military progress, make parties to show of the masks of your revered ancestors, invite the public people for some festivities, enter the vomitorium or your personal garden of lust for some decadence or the forum for some demagogue political action or some hard practiced philosophical discourse you learned from your highly respected greek or roman philosphy teacher, you were considered to be a filthy pleb unfit for the finer art of living.

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@Furious.2867 said:

@Pimsley.3681 said:I’m not old enough to know but does age affect dexterity and reaction times? I’ve noticed most of the ESL pro gamers from other games are mostly in their 20s.

Well, younger gamers are all thumbs when they have to move with WASD or arrow keys.

“all thumbs” is that a UK phrase/idiom? I am American but heard Hyacinth Bucket say it in one of the Keeping up Appearances episode. My parents love that show. It used to be on Netflix

Nah, I think it's most English-speaking countries. I'm in the USA, and I've used it as long as I can remember. Means "clumsy", I think. (If not, I've been using it wrong for ... well, let's not get into THAT again!)

Hmm...In the US, maybe it's an older generation or regional phrase? Like from the Midwest or Bible belt area? It's not popular in coastal cities because of its transient nature and how pop-culture dictates the vocabulary. These days, people are just more direct and say, "Gee, you're clumsy AF"

Edit: But I do like idioms though. It's a more "colorful" use of language. Social media and the instant gratification nature of people these days have killed it.

Where are you that you have never heard it? It is pretty common on the east coast of the US.

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@Pimsley.3681 said:

@Pimsley.3681 said:I’m not old enough to know but does age affect dexterity and reaction times? I’ve noticed most of the ESL pro gamers from other games are mostly in their 20s.

Age in most cases, but not all, does affect dexterity. But more than that, it affects stamina and focus, at least in my case. However, since most people don't raid or competitively PvP or WvW, what does it matter?

I'll be 56 soon and I'm part of the first generation that grew up on video games (admittedly a faint shadow of what they have become today). I'm not going to stop playing just because I'm not interested in killing myself raiding. There's plenty of stuff in this game for a guy like me to do.

The builds I tend to make aren't meta builds, but they're more fire and forget builds. Phantasm builds on a chronomancer, for example, rather than a shatter build. I still shatter when I can resummon 2 phantasms, but it's not nearly as active. Daredevil is a very very easy build, using staff and dual pistol, for people who want to take it easier and still clear content.

I tend to stay away from eles and engies, not that I never play them but I don't play them as much or as hard. My engie is using a flame thrower build that works quite nicely that I call fire and forget. lol

56 is still young. It’s the new 36 haha. First generation gamer? That means you played the Atari 2600? My dad had one!

I had the Atari 2600. I still have Pong, but no way to hook it to my television now even if I wanted to.

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@Aye.8392 said:

@Pimsley.3681 said:I’m not old enough to know but does age affect dexterity and reaction times? I’ve noticed most of the ESL pro gamers from other games are mostly in their 20s.

Age in most cases, but not all, does affect dexterity. But more than that, it affects stamina and focus, at least in my case. However, since most people don't raid or competitively PvP or WvW, what does it matter?

I'll be 56 soon and I'm part of the first generation that grew up on video games (admittedly a faint shadow of what they have become today). I'm not going to stop playing just because I'm not interested in killing myself raiding. There's plenty of stuff in this game for a guy like me to do.

The builds I tend to make aren't meta builds, but they're more fire and forget builds. Phantasm builds on a chronomancer, for example, rather than a shatter build. I still shatter when I can resummon 2 phantasms, but it's not nearly as active. Daredevil is a very very easy build, using staff and dual pistol, for people who want to take it easier and still clear content.

I tend to stay away from eles and engies, not that I never play them but I don't play them as much or as hard. My engie is using a flame thrower build that works quite nicely that I call fire and forget. lol

56 is still young. It’s the new 36 haha. First generation gamer? That means you played the Atari 2600? My dad had one!

I had the Atari 2600. I still have Pong, but no way to hook it to my television now even if I wanted to.

Good news is that you can finally buy one of these now for nostalgia:

https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Flashback-Gold-Console-Black-857847003820/dp/B06XWB59H4/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_63_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=S4AH63YFH4ZW4K5BQASF

But GW2 is still my favorite game at the moment :+1:

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@Furious.2867 said:Are older gamers richer in-game?

To get any idea of age compared to in-game wealth, you would have to make a pretty detailed survey of players' ages compared to their game wealth. And then you'd need to decide what 'richer' actually means in GW2. Buys lots of gems? Has lots of gold? Has hoarded a ton of mats? Spends a lot? Saves a lot? Owns a ton of gem store items and every available upgrade?

In the end it comes down to how an individual person chooses to spend their money and/or free time, so I doubt there is a major connection of loot to age group.

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