Gaming

Late 50's here and a gamers. I don't plan on stopping. Enjoy your gaming.

I first gamed in a Commodore 64. I was a pioneer.

My backlog of games isn't going to play itself. I have no choice. (in my 50s)

That's an actually very interesting question, I've never thought of that.
I'm a gay guy and I'll be 33 next week and most of the time I'm talking to a new guy and I say I love games either they like games too or they just don't have something to comment about it... It's just something. But to be fair, I don't meet new people frequently so my experience is kinda limited and I don't know other guys that are older than me.
And I don't think I would really care if someone doesn't like that I'm old and still gaming. People read, watch movies, play cards for ages, gaming is a hobby as much as any other.
A person that thinks being old and gaming isn't fine is just a person I wouldn't connect to...

I'm early gen Z and will continue gaming when I get older definitely. It's just a generational thing I think,

Interesting question! For me it feels like both a social group and age-based thing. I know of a couple co-workers in their 30s / mid 40s who play video games and we’ll chat about games very occasionally. My ex’s friends were all mid-twenties folks and gaming was one of their multiple hobbies.

But in general, I wouldn’t bring video games up with the majority of my other co-workers, and certainly not during small talk with more-or-less strangers (chiropractor, barbers, etc), whereas every other hobby I’d be cool talking to strangers about. I think I’ve been socialized to feel like gaming is “immature” and only to be talked about with other people “in the know” so I don’t feel judged for enjoying it.

Close to 40 here and game is life.

If I meet someone new and they don't game I'm like "oh." and ask them politely, yet firmly to leave.

50+ gamer here and my social circle all game. Wife doesn’t like to use the controller but will sit through and give hints with the puzzles. (We tend to play adventure/puzzle games) My father in law who is 84 still games. There is no age limit. Do what you enjoy and find people who enjoy it with you.

I am middle-aged. I play every weekend with my uncle who is in his 50s/60s.

My kids, who are single-digit in age, play things.

Times have changed, its not the 1980s/1990s where we have computer-illiterate parents. We all grew up playing games!

I'm mid thirties myself and games are what I grew up with and it's how I like to enjoy my storytelling. I think it's entirely lost on some people how different games are as a media. My SO and I have had chats about it and she understands that it's a whole different experience than a movie or tv and appreciates my enthusiasm for truly great games.

I can totally understand that some people just don't jive with games but I'm so grateful my SO tolerates my gaming even though she doesn't partake much herself.

I feel no pressure to stop so I don't see myself stopping gaming anytime soon. You just need to find the right one, they don't even need to like games, they just need to like you as a person.

Early forties here. Also grew up with the Spectrum. In my admittedly slightly nerdy friend circle it's completely normal. People always talking about interesting games in just the same way as they would movies. People playing games with their kids. Lots of talk about Tears of the Kingdom at our last gathering. I assume for younger people it's even more normal.

All this is to say, I don't think there's a static absolute age cut-off. I think we're probably the first generation that will see a substantial portion continue to identify as small-g 'gamers' well into retirement. If they're is a (moving, getting older) age cut-off, at 47 now, maybe you're just on the upper side of the tipping point?

The hell? There's no age-gate for anything. Except maturity. If you think someone enjoying something is childish, instead of feeling happy for them, then you're the one who has growing up to do.

Books are also a great hobby, which many find boring, but it's never considered an age thing just because the typical adult isn't into reading books. The same goes for games. Not everyone enjoys them, but that's a matter of personal taste, not age. Sure, our tastes can change during our lives, and some people "grow-out" of their childhood interests. But that might be more correlation than causation.

Take my dad, for instance, I remember him gaming on his PC and PS1 during my pre-teens, but he stopped gaming for many years. But recently, he got BACK into gaming, and asked me to build him a modern PC to play on, since it's been so long since he's used non-apple computers. These days, when he finds the right type of game for himself, he is more difficult to get away from it then I am.

Games are a new medium, and new things get adopted first by new generations. So maybe older ones consider them a "kids" thing, but at 26, I see no reason why video games would ever stop being a part of my life.

You hit it yesterday. A squad has been dispatched to retrieve your computer. I'm sorry.

I think it's a position that often comes from ignorance. Usually these people have no concept that games can involve high quality character and plot writing like Mass Effect, or teamwork focused gaming situations like MMO raids. They either never had any exposure to games or decided early on (usually in adolescence) that games weren't for them.

Ironically there's often a lot of overlap between game haters and people who spend more hours in front of the TV than most of us do gaming.

I don't think there's an age cut off, I just think you got into the hobby when it was niche and your peers didn't. I'm an NES-generation video game player and I don't really know anyone my age who doesn't at least have a gamer in their household. On the other end, I don't know a single person who has a cable subscription.

I'm 50. I've been gaming since my Dad won a Pong console at a work thing. I still love gaming, and so do a lot of other older men. Hell, the discussion at the lunch table at work today was about all the shit people are doing in Zelda. This was a group of 4 guys, all well over 30 (except one guy who just turned 30), all very successful..

Born before 86 and it's one of my main hobbies. A large percentage of my friends are gamers of various kinds. I don't think there's a cut off, just people that get too caught up in defining what adulthood is and not letting fun and individuality be part of it.

I'm in my fourties. I've fought clanwars in MoHAA with my now wife. We've spent an embarrasing amount of time raiding in WoW and by now we've had servers running for Ark, Valheim and Vrising with our daughter. She's more into Roblox though..

I'm not sure. I'm in my 30s and me and almost all my coworkers play something on a regular basis: PS5/XBox/PC/Switch/mobile. Even my like 60 year supervisor is a lady addicted to mobile games.

It's a relatively new form of entertainment. Books, theater, movies and TV all have had more time to develop and become culturally relevant. Video games are young and have had a steep growth curve in terms of innovation, scope, and market share. I feel it will become more and more common for older folks to play games and it will become more and more acceptable and normal. I feel that mobile gaming is legit also and people might not realize that their Candy Crush or Solitaire games are video games! It's a wide and versatile type of entertainment so the people who consume it will be as well.

Back in the ancient Greek era there were people worried that printed books were going to rot peoples' minds because they would just be absorbed in them 24/7.

Do what you wanna do, dude.

I'm about your age (48) and game. I don't think there's a cut-off date as such, but it's a little bit of several things.

There is certainly a generational angle. When we were growing up in the 80s and early 90s, playing computer games was definitely not an activity targeted at adults, and gamers were generally seen as geeks and nerds. This changed of course, but other people who grew up at the same time as us but never got into games may still hang onto that image.

Gender also plays a role, women our age are a lot less likely to have ever been into games. My girlfriend for example has no problems with it but she never gamed herself and doesn't really understand it. If I think of female friends and acquaintances, I know only one woman who games as well, but she's already 8 years younger.

There's also the fact that many men do in fact grow out of gaming as they get older, start to have more responsibilities and less free time and when other interests and hobbies start to compete for that limited free time. I notice that in myself too, it's a lot less important to me now than it was 25 years ago.

Then there's the slightly uncomfortable fact that many women simply find it unattractive when a man lists gaming as a hobby, and see it as a red flag, perhaps because they associate it with certain stereotypes of people who are obsessive about it and whose whole personality revolves around gaming, perhaps because they have previous bad experiences with it, or perhaps because it's something they simply can't relate with. Maybe gamers are to women what "horse girls" are to men? :)

I think the best way to handle it on the dating scene is to show that you're a functioning adult with a well rounded personality and a variety of interests, who just happens to game as well. At the end of the day, you have to have enough common ground to start a relationship with someone.

41 year old woman here. I was born with gaming, I will die with gaming. Do not hide your gaming from the get go. Put it in your profile. Its a huge part of my life, so finding that in a partner is a must in my book. There are women out there that share my sentiment, and some that just like games or don't care.

As a few others have mentioned its mainly a generational thing. Video games are still "recent" and you are/were at the point that it was just starting to catch. Keep looking and hopefully you will get someone of the same mind set you are

Don't know what to say that hasn't already been covered in five pages of comments, but don't date people who denigrate your hobbies. There's no "age cutoff" for enjoying the things you enjoy. You don't just stop enjoying things after a certain arbitrary age threshold.

The old view of adulthood as being a time of constant misery, struggle, and hardship, in which every moment of enjoyment you manage to claw from it is a moment stolen from the future, which will be replaced by further misery, is fucking stupid. Do what makes you happy, and ditch the Karens.

I’m closer to 40 than 30, and I play video games basically every day. My spouse is super supportive. The only thing that’s changed is that I don’t play PC games unless it’s on my steam deck, because I already spend too much time at a desk working. But I have a PS5 that I finally bought a racing wheel for, and Ive been logging tons of hours on TOTK.

Basically, find someone who appreciates you and your hobbies. Being a gamer isn’t a bad one, despite what those of us that grew up adjacent to Gen X might think.

Folks born in the 70s may have more feelings about video games being kid stoys than younger ones, but they probably also have really backwards ideas about, I don't know, fun in general? And that's probably signalling that there's some kind of fundamental personality mismatch or some unwelcomed views on masculinity and gender dynamics.

It might be a little harder to meet people, but it's worth sorting through the mismatches in order to find a compatible partner, even if it gets discouraging sometimes.

For what it's worth, I'm 40, and I not only still play video games, I still play the video games I loved when I was 5, and watch the cartoons that I loved when I was 10. My wife's not big into video games, but she definitely doesn't judge people for their preferred forms of entertainment.

Death

I don't think there's one. Still, I find it a bit funny thinking of myself and my partner sitting next to each other, each on our own gaming PC, once we're old (or should I say older, yikes the 90s really were almost 30 years ago...)