Gaming

I'm 45. I spent the weekend playing video games with my 43-year-old girlfriend and her nephew. When we thought she had COVID I bought a couple games that were online multiplayer so we could play together while she was isolated.

You just need to find the right people for you. Put "I love video games" in your Tinder profile, and this will weed out people who think that's for kids. Put yourself out there as you are, and it will attract the people who like you for who you are.

As someone born after 1986 I would consider it weird that there could be an age at which I wouldn't play games. Just do whatever you enjoy

Nah. If you enjoy it, and your kids like spending time with you gaming, then who cares?

Life is too short and kids grow up too fast to care what some grumpy old people who wouldn’t know fun if it hit them in the head will say about what you enjoy.

It's not a question of age, but of culture. Video game are no longer niche stuff for a handful of nerds. It's a huge industry, like music or cinema.

People who say that games are childish are just trying to hide their ignorance.

I'm a 47-year-old female gamer.

I'm with you—I'm not going to allow peer pressure to get to me, but it's obvious that people believe it's childish. Fuck 'em. I think it's a better hobby than mindlessly watching TV, for sure.

It might be an age thing - I'm 32, game as a hobby, and work in software. 80% of my coworkers play games to some extent, and most are in their twenties to mid thirties.

But when I used to work in healthcare, I think only a few of my coworkers shared the hobby.

Generally, I think the younger the generation is, the more acceptable and "normal" gaming is. It's not a guarantee, but it's definitely more common.

Edit: I'd just be yourself and do as you like. There's definitely people out there who share your hobby. Some of the older members of a long-standing guild I'm a part of are in their 50's or retired. I will say that the gender ratio skews mostly male for older gamers though. The women I know who are interested in games are all sub 40 (this is just a personal observation, your results may vary)

I'm a 51 year old woman who plays video games (including ESO, PC/EU). We exist. If there is some sort of arbitrary cutoff age when I'm supposed to stop gaming, I will be steadfastly ignoring that "rule", if I haven't already.

to most women I meet, around my age, video games are anathema.

You should be grateful for them filtering themselves out of your dating pool so quickly. Not all red flags are that obvious.

"what is the age cut off for socially acceptable fun having" is what I read. Do what you enjoy and anyone saying you shouldn't do X, or you are too old to do Y aren't the type of people I associate with. Just turned 30 and I never plan to stop.

Definitely keep searching and find someone who accepts your hobby, even if maybe they don't partake themselves. I'm 30 and still play video games, though admittedly my career and hobbies eat into a lot of my play time, I don't see myself stopping.

i'm 21, it wouldn't be weird if you were gaming at 77, let alone 47 lol

maybe it's not intergenerational :p

Do what you enjoy, I'm nearly 30 and I plan to game until some pries this mouse and keyboard or my controller from my cold dead hands! Have fun and don't worry about it!

No such thing as a cut off age! I guess it's down to personal preferences and you may find people who are into video games well into their seventies. I can definitely see my husband and myself playing MMOs in a retirement home 😂.

If the people you're matching up with judge you for having a hobby which is no different than, say, watching TV series on Netflix, maybe you need to weed them out.

I think from Gen X onwards it just gets more and more common.

Also, people will say "I don't play computer/video games" and then spend hours on Candy Crush or whatever.

This thread is so full of good vibes.

Anyway, as a 35yo, there's no cutoff point. It's all culture. Women and men alike will scoff at video-games as children's toys, but it's because of their own culture growing up. There are also men and women out there who enjoy it as well. Typically more men, but not just.

My dad is 66. He still games every day. Go dad! He's just about to fully complete fallout 4. Fuck anyone who doesn't get it, their opinions don't matter. Do what makes you happy.

Saying you don't like playing video games is like saying you don't read books or watch cinema. It's its own medium.

There's a huge self-selection bias in action here... Subscribe to gaming sub, find gamers haha.

Just be yourself dude. If the ladies don't grok it, just let it slide. But you do need to find commonalities if you're dating. So don't bore them to tears about gaming if they don't care -- find something else in common to talk about. If they judge you, however, find someone else.

My grandfather played games (CIV, WoW, and Elder Scrolls) until his death at 89 years old. Enjoy the things you enjoy, someone who is your person will like that you enjoy things you enjoy.

I have a feeling that if you worded it differently you'd improve the dating thing. If instead of "yeah, I like gaming" you said "my sons love videogames and we've been bonding a lot this way, it's been a nice hobby to get all of us closer" the non-gamers might be able to empathize more and keep the conversation alive.

Be 80 and play FIFA, it's fine. There's no age where you are obliged to put down your controller for the last time. But it shouldn't be your first answer while you're dating, and definitely not your only one.

Being a gamer, as an identity, has a lot of baggage.

Having gaming be your only interest or hobby is associated with being an unambitious self-interested person who intends to do as a little as possible, as long as possible. The recognisable games are marketed towards kids/teens with time to burn.

Imagine your date's interest was "moderating Reddit", "watching TikTok", or "reading Instagram". That's what 'gaming' sounds like: your hobby is media consumption.

There's no age where you aren't allowed to consume media; but it's worrying if that consumption is your identity, if consumption makes up your routine.

So it's not actually about age - it's about maturity and goal-setting.

When we're younger, most of us live moment-by-moment. Media consumption offers no future, but it has a pleasurable present.

But as people age, people develop goals and interests that require more investment and focus, and they're looking for people that are doing the same. A cutthroat economy demands people develop goals for financial stability, even if they still otherwise like games.

As we age, we stop looking for somebody to hang out with, but to build a life with.

So once the people you're talking to have interests for the future, "I enjoy my present doing my own thing" doesn't offer them anything. If they don't play games, they don't even know what games are capable of. Maybe one day they'd enjoy playing Ultimate Chicken Horse with you.

But right now, they just see the recognisable titles that want to monopolise children's time, and assume you're doing that. They picture you spending 20+ hours a week playing Fortnite. And there is an age cut-off where it's no longer socially-acceptable to be a child.

It's not that video games are bad, but they're a non-answer. They want to know what you do that's good, and a non-answer implies you don't have a good answer at all, and that makes video games 'bad'.

I'm getting up to your age, but over the last few years I've been spending less time (nearly no time) playing video games, and I grew up with them! The only exception is if my son and I are playing together, then I don't mind sinking a few hours into it.

Gaming is an investment of time.

Not that I find it unacceptable, especially if that's a pastime or hobby, but the older I get, the more I realize that I don't **want ** to spend any more time than I need to in front of a screen.

My priorities and commitments have also changed over the years, so any "free time" I get is usually spent maintaining the house, fixing something, running errands, being outdoors, or preparing meals for my family.

As a side note, I think some of my feelings have also been caused by the direction the gaming industry has gone.

I simply don't have the patience to be bothered with today's video game business model to really care at all about investing time into it. Microtransactions, "seasons", Gold/Platinum/GOTY/ versions, unnecessary grinds to get non-important stuff, ads in the console dashboard and in games, etc.

I'm more likely to play a retro game off an emulator than I am playing one on my Xbox Series X on a 120Hz, 4K, OLED TV.

Well here's the thing: you're an adult and as long as you're not hurting anyone else, you can do whatever you want, forever.

IMA stop right at the start, who gives a shit Play at any age ya want You shouldn't be bound by anything but yourself

Look, people our age were literally there at the advent of computer gaming. Why should we stop?

It's not age related. It's generational.

You're at the end of Gen X (as am I), meaning most of the women of your age group that you're probably dating didn't really grow up around video games and probably still see them as a wasteful, childish pastime, which was the general, parochial view of our parents' generation about our hobbies. (Sure, endlessly watch people play sports on television but never waste your time doing something you personally enjoy.)

Meanwhile, those even a few years younger than us grew up in a generation where more and more girls grew up with video games, have a more personal relationship with them, and understand the value of the hobby. That's only increased with time.

My own wife, who is at the older end of the Millenials, grew up playing video games with her younger brothers but never had any real affinity for them. She's never particularly cared about my gaming (something I do now with my daughter), though she's never taken interest in playing anything herself.

Ultimately, you'll probably just have to choose a better class of date.

You and I (45) are part of the first gamer generation, the first generation that had the opportunity to grow up around video games. As such, you'd expect gaming be a normal hobby for people of our age, and to some extent, it is. However, many people have grown out of games and consider them childish. I think that this is because the games of our childhood were very simple and shallow entertainment. Over the years, games have come to address more and more serious topics with a depth not unlike that of "higher" cultural media such as film or literature, but the people who grew up and left gaming behind before this development don't know that. Their only experience of games may be the simple, "childish" games of the 70s and 80s, so they consider gamers childish as well.

I think the time to stop playing games is when you're dead. Until then, nope. No cut off age. Why stop doing the things you enjoy. You should be free and comfortable doing anything you enjoy as long as it doesn't negatively impact on anybody else's life.

I’m in agreement with most here. There doesn’t need to be a cutoff age. My dad is in his 70s and is super excited for the new Final Fantasy coming out.

It took me a minute to come back around to gaming because, I thought being mature meant having different hobbies, or suppressing my desire to indulge in “childish” things. Hell, I was that dude that bailed on my friends who still played dungeons and dragons because we were supposed to be growing into mature adults and mature adults don’t play pretend.

Now I’m like, love the things you love.

Unabashedly.

It can be a little knife to your soul when you meet someone that you think you like and they belittle something you’re into, but, in my book, properly decent people don’t do that. Decent people don’t shit on you for being excited about something or for being interested in a hobby (unless your “hobby” is something that harms people or your environment). I like to think that decent people will try to understand what you like about the things you like.

It takes a lot for a person to be vulnerable and say, “this is a thing I like.” People who are worth your time will respect that vulnerability.

I’m impressed you can keep up with the kids playing Valo and Apex, I get dogwalked in most FPS games because I’m a slow old man. Lol.

I thinkt it's more a thing of social bubbles than age brackets, really.

I have wildly diverse hobbies, so I usually manage to mention something that people around me find weird. Gaming is one of them, and since I am not just your age but also female, I have received tons of strange comments over the years. At least my being somewhat fluid in English isn't making me stand out anymore!

I think computer-related activities are seen different by our age group since we didn't exactly grow up with it, or at least most of us didn't. I know I was already a teenager when my parents bought us kids a computer, and that one needed inputs in BASIC and was textbased only. And while several of my classmates had similar experiences plus parents who insisted this was useful to know for our futures (and boy, where they right!), most of us still preferred to spent our time elsewhere. I see the difference in my kids, who grew up with not only computers and related technology, but also the internet. My son occasionally played board games via an internet platform by the time he was five (under supervision, of course), and as such, video games are much more part of daily life for that generation.

In my eyes, the decades-long discussion on when to give your child his/her first mobile phone has similar roots: We were used to a slower pace of life, that as a child you carry a few coins so that you can call your parents from a pay phone in an emergency, and otherwise you had to be at home at a specified time. Play dates with school mates were discussed in person at school, and so forth. Our children are dealing with far faster pace, discussion with class mates only occasionally take place eye-to-eye, and their schedules have become much more complex and fluid. Also, they grow up knowing everybody and anybody carries a phone in their pocket, and of course they want the same. Technology is integrated into their lifes from the start, and that means gaming is far more acceptable as a pastime.

I am over 60 and play Minecraft regularly.

My partner is in her mid 30s and is a game designer. Suffice to say she likes games, board games / pen & paper, video games...

Living within the bounds of common “social acceptability” is stifling and dull, in my personal experience. Being kind and considerate is important, but why waste precious time trying to suppress or conceal harmless parts of oneself?

I’d rather select for settings where I can be embraced as my authentic self. I was forced to live with someone who was harshly judgmental and crapped on facets of me daily when I was growing up. I’d NEVER willingly subject myself to that again.

There's no cut-off. You've just been unlucky with the women you've met.

They have no interest in it, therefor it's not a selling point for them. It's simply a missmatch of types.

Why should there be a cut-off age? JM Pescado was playing and modding Sims 2 in his 80s wasn't he?

bruhhhhhh.. 40s folks is what created the booming gaming industry. We can't stop now it'll crumble without us!!!

I'm 55 and I will probably be playing right up until I die. You do whatever makes you feel comfortable, I am too old to give a fuck what other people think.

Until I see grown men stopping caring about sports I don’t think there’s some magical cut off. It’s the same shit, like what you enjoy fuck the rest

If they have issues with your hobbies they're not worth it. Who cares what you're into, if it doesn't negatively affect things, who the hell cares. My wife and I regularly game right next to each other and we're well past the "normal" age for gamers.

I think it's more of a generational thing than an age thing. Younger generations that grew up surrounded by games don't think it's weird and I while you do have less time to game as you get older I don't think it'll ever get weird.

Was about to say that there is no cutoff age. I distinctly remember my grandfather playing RPGs on the Super Nintendo when I was a kid. That man played most of his life and well into his older years. Do what you love to do man. Ignore those who don't appreciate that you have a hobby you actually enjoy.

So the question, there must be some sort of cut off age at which video games are no longer an acceptable pastime. Is it absolute age based (nothing after 35) or is it something to do with the progression of games into popular culture and people born after, say, 1986 will not see it as unacceptable?

Why do you care what other people/society thinks? Play/watch/read/do whatever you want. As long as you're not hurting anybody and you're enjoying yourself why would it matter

I am 45, so I understand what you are talking about. The issue is not strictly age. One does not simply age out of video games. I think the issue is just that our particular age group and generation is sort of on the dividing line between two extremes. On one extreme are those that are older than us have never played video games because they didn't exist when they were kids. My older sister is just old enough that she never played video games because as they were created, they were created for kids my age and younger and therefore she had no interest. To her, they will always be kid things even though they are now developed to be appealing for all ages. On the other extreme are those a lot younger than us where basically everyone plays video games. Not very many of the younger generation gives up entirely on video games.

I predict that in 30 years, video games will be popular in nursing homes and retirement homes whereas currently, no one in that age group has much interest at all. By that time, the whole population will have been exposed to video games their whole life and that will make all the difference.

In the current oldest generation there is not much stigma to deal with because none of them had video games growing up, so there is very little interest. And in the youngest generation, there is very little stigma because everyone plays video games. Meanwhile, we will always be part of the generation where only some of us kids played video games - mostly boys, and mostly seen as the nerds if we stuck with it.

There isn’t a cutoff in my experience. I’ve met more over 40 gamers that are chill to hang out with then under 25s.

I'm 33 and learned about PC gaming mostly from my grandfather when I was about 10. He had games like Jazz Jackrabbit, Jill of the Jungle, and other early era Sierra games. He also introduced me to Nethack for which I am eternally grateful! He continued playing games and using 3d rendering software until he lost his eyesight in his late 60s, and even then used a screen reader to use a computer for some other things. I think any cutoff age is going to be largely dependent on what social circles you're discussing and what area you're in.

I work in the games industry. So it would be pretty surprising if there were a "social cutoff" in my circle.

I've met people who think playing games is weird for an adult, but then they don't question watching TV or YouTube videos for hours. People who judge you based on where you find your entertainment tend not to be fun to be around.