I mean I’m early 50s, so a bit below one of their thresholds, but still in the “older gamers, 40, 50, 60…” bracket used elsewhere in that article.
I’m not sure what’s underserved. There are shitloads of games out there that I’m happy to play. Sure, I’ll nostaglia myself into a coma playing Infocom games in bed on my laptop. But I’ll also sink hours into a good story or walking sim, the single-player campaigns of an FPS, a puzzle game or hell, I’ll keep the kids off my lawn in Fortnite and have fun making them cry. How am I underserved?
there aremore than enough games in circulation to keep retired people entertained forever
Perhaps unusually, I plan to take up gaming when I’m older, having never seriously tried it. I’m 48. I work in IT and I’m a nerd for retro computing, but beyond 16-bit platform shooters and Lemmings, I have barely dipped my toe into gaming culture. At work, I feel like an Irishman who’s never tried Guinness.
I’ve avoided it for two reasons. One is a mental block: a strange and unjustified prejudice against gaming culture. In 90s rural Scotland, where I was raised, you had to fight hard for your place in the social pecking order. I enjoyed football, but my friends were nerds, and I preferred their company to that of the jocks, so I chose my tribe early.
When puberty hit hard, I was already at a disadvantage by not being into sports. I loved my Atari ST, but I was socially aware enough to know that that definitely wasn’t going to attract girls. Fortunately, I also loved music. Nirvana was getting big, and I was hooked. Drinking, smoking, and playing in bands were my thing, and they held strong social currency for a self-conscious kid.
As a result, an almost pathological fear of being judged kept me from getting involved. I missed the whole GTA thing and, except for a bit of Portal, never bothered with it.
I also know that I’m quite prone to addiction, so if I were into gaming, it would eat my life.
So, when I do finally retire and find I’m unable to do much, that’s when I’ll jump on. I’ll be the oldest noob in town and I’m kind of looking forward to it.
ty for sharing this
Games are overwhelmingly made by and marketed to younger generations, argue analysts, while the older demographic is being ignored
They’re busy playing the stuff of their young days.
Any game that relies too much on quick reflexes will usually not be good for older people. Easier difficulties can mitigate that somewhat. Turn based games are perfect for all ages, you can take as long as you want to think your stuff through. You don’t need to make these games “for old people”. I also remember seeing a video that talked about a 70yo man who began playing Asheron’s Call (a 1999 MMORPG) with his grandson and really enjoyed the game, to the point he kept playing until it was shutdown for good.[1]
The industry has spent 40 years chasing the same narrowly defined audience because it was the safest bet, until everyone was chasing it. Imagine if Hollywood only made movies for 18-year-old men. That’s roughly the bet games have been making.
True for big studios, false for indies, who, as always, prove time and time again that you can achieve success with “non standard” formulas, such as Balatro, Stardew Valley, Return of the Obra Dinn, Undertale (some survivorship bias is being applied here, lots of indies, even those that follow “standard formulas” more closely, fail to find success, even with good games)
There is a mismatch between the general investment in tutorials for the first few minutes, relative to where actually the player loss happens,
Make the fucking tutorial OPTIONAL and something you pick as an option in the fucking main menu. This isn’t rocket science.
But that brings you down to other categories that have been growing, like cosy[sic] games, casual games, and retro. And retro has an advantage in that audience in that you don’t need the latest [computer].
There is an important thing to keep in mind here: most casual games are predatory mobile shit. That market has been an absolute cesspool for something like 12 years now, which is almost as long as they existed. Yes, the games are “enjoyable”, because they’ve been finely tuned to be as addictive as possible.
“Give me those 60 year olds who watched Star Trek the original series,” he concludes. “Come on down, play Star Trek Online with me.”
STO? Pass. Unless we can kill this dude:
Found this massivelyop link, but the video is unavailable https://massivelyop.com/2017/01/11/check-out-one-of-the-oldest-asherons-call-players-in-all-senses-of-the-word/ ↩︎
Make the fucking tutorial OPTIONAL and something you pick as an option in the fucking main menu. This isn’t rocket science.
The article isn’t saying you lose players in the tutorial, you lose the much farther in when the level 9 boss too hard to beat for someone who stepped away from the game for 2 weeks.
A lot of people would probably like an optional tutorial, but it’s not the point they are trying to make.
I understand that, but a lot of gamers can figure some games out without a forced tutorial. WASD movement, jump with space, crouch with control, sprint with shift, move camera with mouse, shoot/attack with left click, etc. A lot of designers/developers became so desperate with the possibility that their game might be “someone’s first game of that type” that they choose to force everyone to play the tutorial right at the start, even players that finished the game and decided to start again, and leave it at that.
The tutorial as a main menu option fixes both problems.
I don’t see how the tutorial as a main menu option fixes the problem of someone who played for a while, then had to walk away for two weeks only to come back and have to deal with the ninth boss with degraded skills.
- “I don’t remember how to do that thing, I remember the tutorial showed that”
- Go to tutorial
- Relearn
- Load game back to where you were
The alternative is the tutorial being accessible from within the game, like a manual. In no case the solution is “force the tutorial at the beginning of the game”
The skills learned in the tutorial aren’t the ones that are forgotten when you take two weeks off late in the game. Redoing a tutorial wouldn’t be the solution.
Bullshit. Plenty of games oldnpeople can enjoy.
Balatro
Stardew Valley
Peglin
New heroes of might and magic
XCOM
Civilization
Flight Simulator (plus a ton of all the other sim games on the market).
Man I’ve seen my fair share of old people rocking it to Best Saber and and Synth Riders. Just play on the right difficulty…
My grandpa played Flight Simulator every day until he passed away at 100. He loved that game.
(40m) It’s funny, I haven’t touched any of the versions since 5.0.
It looks so complicated nowadays.
I played version 10 (FSX) back in the days and it had an excellent progressive tutorial. You can also set the realism level and you can select simpler propeller airplanes.
They are making games for retirees
AARP.com has a long list of games, and all the leaderboards resets everyday at midnight.
My grandma, who has dementia, and severe arthritis, has an alarm to get up at midnight to go play the games so she can be #1. Every night. She loves being #1.
She’s 82 years old. Just broke her hip for the 3rd time, and she asked if we can bring her laptop so she can play her games.
I’m gonna pwn your grandma no cap
Bet
I’m not sure having games made for you would be better than having games you can play. There’s plenty of shit out there that’s not marketed towards me anymore, but I still enjoy it. And yes, it’s rarely AAA games. Even more enjoyable AND cheaper.
Did not read the article just saw the headline and thought that’s gotta be the dumbest thing ever that’s all.
I think it’s pretty telling that so many of the people they talk to and a lot of the focus of the article isn’t really about older gamers, it’s about their money.
The opportunity is substantial. The 40+ segment in the US is on track to grow from $19 billion in 2022 to $43 billion by 2030, a 132% expansion at a moment when the rest of the industry is shrinking. These are players with the most disposable income, the longest gaming literacy, and the highest brand loyalty.
I’m in that “40+ segment” and I suspect part of the “problem” these companies face is that older gamers have seen the enshitification of so many of the brands we love. Our tolerance for bullshit is basically gone at this point. Micro transactions, season passes, fucking ads in games, all of that bullshit is a quick way to not get our money.
I also suspect “brand loyalty” is basically gone for the same reason. As a kid, I looked for the Electronic Arts logo. If I saw this logo on a game package, I knew I was looking at a good game. I haven’t bought an EA game in years. I don’t expect to buy an EA game any time soon and I basically ignore everything they do. Sure, if a trailer for Starflight 3 dropped, I’d sit up and take notice. I’d also expect it to be an enshitified mess wearing the skin of a beloved series to sucker me in, before pouncing on my wallet.
So ya, maybe just make good games and older gamers will inevitably buy them. I mean, Larian can pretty much say, “hi we’re making…” and I’ll have my wallet out and be pulling bills before they get any further. And maybe that’s your “brand loyalty”. Game companies who make good games and aren’t private equity firms wearing the dead skin suits of brands we used to love.
Happy cake day!
This sums up my thoughts on it, too.
Before reading it, I was ready to come back here expecting to say I’m glad someone’s thinking about older gamers and joke that I feel attacked (being grey and not feeling my age), but then I saw it went down the “but their juicy wallets” angle and… I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.
They’re not even couching it in more palatable terms. So now I expect it will be just a patronising nostalgia IP reboot fest designed to extract as much cash as possible. And almost certainly subscription-based, because what company doesn’t these days.
Good luck with that: older people may have more disposable income, but they also have years of experience with marketing and FOMO tricks, along with the exploitation and butchering of franchises they once loved for a quick buck.
So now I expect it will be just a patronising nostalgia IP reboot fest designed to extract as much cash as possible.
Ya, this is one of the big turn-offs for me. For example, I really liked Prince of Persia: Sands of Time back in the day. I’ve got exactly zero interest in the remake. Ubisoft’s logo now looking like a neat pile of dogshit, viewed from above, is pretty apt.
Prince of Persia is a great example! Did Lemmings ever get a reboot? 😄
I kind of want to see what modern game developers can do with old C64 games like Parallax or Head Over Heels, or Amiga ones like Cannon Fodder or Sensible Soccer, but time has taught me 2 things:
- Be very careful what you wish for. You may get it in the worst way possible.
- Nostalgia is sometimes best left in the past.
I do like that GOG, etc, do their game preservation thing. Seeing games like Hexen, Rise of the Triad and Wing Commander running on modern CPUs is kinda fun, but often confirms point 2 above.
I still break out the old Sierra games (specifically the Quest for Glory series) from time to time. Those are still a lot of fun and ScummVM makes them run damn near perfectly.
I am not quite in that demographic but getting pretty close. I’ve bought maybe a game a year for a very long time now. Most non-indie stuff is complete and utter trash. If I see a AAA publisher logo, I take it as a sign that it’s not worth my time or money.
Most non-indie stuff is complete and utter trash.
Ya, it’s telling that some of my favorite games these days all started as indie games. I do worry about them as they get in bed with larger producers, but I also understand the draw. E.g. I still love Valheim, but they were Embracer’d by private equity. And I’m waiting for that relationship to push them to shit all over their players. Though I understand that publisher backing lets them focus more on development and less on the marketing and distribution of the game.
They can always go play LoL
Haven’t they suffered through life enough?
Can they, though? According to the article their dumb boomer brains can’t remember how to play between gaming sessions. Does LoL give them a play tutorial every 15 minutes so they can enjoy gaming?
EVE Online exists? (sorry! couln’t resist, don’t pod me!)
also World of Warcraft: Retired housewives
Call of Duty: Almost retired Mall Ninja Dads
Candy Crush: Actual Grandmas
conspiracy Youtube: Grandpas
Is there a WoW - retired housewife connection I’m not aware of?
anecdotal evidence only :D
What makes a game “for retired people”?
What a silly premise.
Serious answer? By making a game that targets a vulnerable group that preys on loneliness and declining mental capacity. This speaks less about “what games would old people play and enjoy” and more about “how to leverage abusive techniques to maximize the extraction of wealth”.
They don’t say this in the article…out loud. But it is mostly about how they have a large disposable income so it is 100% what they mean.
Wait, but that’s also young people!
Candy crush is already a thing
Oof. I can respect your cynicism though.
My thoughts as well.
Old people like the same shit as young people when it comes to gaming. Ever played D&D?
I thought that was just CRPGs? I swear half of the modern CRPG fanbase are white hairs.
Pretty sure my dad just wants to play Skyrim forever.
Yeah they have. They’re the same fucking games as before. If you’re not a gamer by the time you’re over 65, odds are good that you’re not gonna suddenly become one.
My 76 year old aunt is active in her local veteran’s hall. One of the younger vets brought in a gaming pc and demoed some games. My aunt was stoked. She immediately got a discord account and is shopping new laptops so she can play some games.
If the old aren’t gamers already, often having someone show them in person can flip that switch. Their meeting hall has a couple pc’s available and they’re talking about upgrading them for LAN parties.
Games are marketed at the young. But retirees have free time. Marketing games to older folks makes sense.
Yeah but for everyone like that there’s one or more like my mother (that’s demonic) or dad (what’s going on, you keep switching too fast, what is that, etc…?)
Uh, every sandbox vehicle construction game?
Every factory optimization game?
I had to quit playing most of them because they each one could count as a second job.
Minecraft, Factorio, Satisfactory, Space Engineers, E.V.E, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Kerb Space Program, Don’t Starve (Together), Dragon Quest Builders 1/2, No Man’s Sky, Fallout 3/NV/4, Borderlands 3/4, Slay the Spite 1/2.
There are tons to games to last (the remaining) lifetime. Hell I would have enough with solely Factorio
don’t forget my summer car
