An Interview With 2old2play's Doodi

vinnie2k writes "This is an interesting interview with the founder of 2old2play.com. In it he discusses the future of gaming for older people, why we need communities like 2old2play, and how the gaming industry needs to refocus its efforts on the games it makes. Cool insight and worth the read for any older gamers."

Comments

Old gamers? I must be ancient.

[XorNand]

WTF? Since when is anyone over the age of 25 an "old gamer?" Now, Old Grandma Hardcore is an old gamer.

Re:Old gamers? I must be ancient.

[bladesjester]

I used to get the same thing. I also used to get accused of doing nothing but playing on my computer when I was working on programming assignments for college if I was at their house.

On getting a life

[Animats]

It sounds more like "gaming for gamers who have a life". Many of the MMORPGs require so much online time per week to advance that you can't have a life outside the game.

too old?

[drew]

The founder of a group called 2old2play is younger than I am? I went to the article expecting to see some insightful commentary from somebody at least in his 40's. I stopped reading when I got to his age.

Then again, now that I look closer at his name and the name of the group, I have a hard time believing he's over 18.

Strange

[Da3vid]

I find it strange how the stereotype of gaming has been given to younger people. There doesn't seem to be anything inherent in gaming itself that keeps itself from older people. Perhaps it is only the industry which gears itself towards younger people, because it has more widely available material to be used. If the industry had sufficient material (perhaps just better storylines?), I can't see any good reason why gaming wouldn't be popular among all ages aside from social stigmas.

-Da3vid-

Re:Strange

[JanneM]

Much gaming entails mastering a given game over many hours of play. You can't really enjoy online FPS:s until you've put in a lot of hours of practice first, for example. For "mainstream", visible gaming, you need to be able to put in quite a lot of hours, preferably in fairly large chunks of time.

People over college age tend to have jobs and family. They do not have all that many long stretches of free hours, and when they do, they will tend to spend it with their spouse, their kids, their garden, whatever.

Note, however, that there is a whole parallel gaming universe out there with a huge number of people playing, and with an average age much, much higher than for the consoles. Just log in to Yahoo! games section as one example. Card and board games where you and your fellow players are all equal; small "desktop" games (mah-jongg, tetris, whatever) that you can enjoy for a quick break of five to ten minutes.

Re:Strange

[lawpoop]

I think the thing is because electronic video games are relatively new. When they first came out, the only people into them were youngsters, because only youngsters are into new things.

Now that successive generations are growing up, those people who were once kids are now adults, and still into video games. The stereotype will change once those people start getting to be elderly. Then everyone will be into video games.

Re:This is so timely (for me anyway)

[Sycraft-fu]

First clan I joined back in the Team Fortress days had a wide range of people. Youngest was 16, oldest was 53. Median age was probably in the 20s, but we had a number of older people that played. Wasn't a problem, just what they did with their time rather than watch TV or the other activities that many people do for entertainment.

You'll actually find that a lot of the quality groups out there are older gamers. PArt of it is just a maturity thing. When teamwork becomes important, maturity becomes important and that's one thing that usually just takes life experience to develop.

Most of my friends and I play World of Warcraft, and we've done the big raid guild thing, however we are all 25 or older, all have real jobs and such. Works fine, just means that you log out at 10-11 during the week and don't play every night. The more hardcore people don't begrudge that.

Re:Wow

[RealDSmooth]

As a co-founder of 2old2play.com, I am also disappointed with the bitching here on slashdot regarding the article. The reason we picked 25 as a staring age is because it's when most people mature, start families, have kids, etc. Our oldest member is in his 80's and we have plenty in between. I'm 32 myself, so we do cover the "older gamers" crowd... DSmooth

A new market awaits

[Saint37]

The targeting of games to younger people creates a market opportunity for a small visionary company that realizes that in the future, gamers will come from all age demographics.

http://www.tradealyst.com/

Re:I don't play games

[LordLucless]

SUCH A WASTE of time. If my kids spent half the time that they play games on learning a computer language, then they would be pulling down six figure salaries.

Which is the most important thing, after all.

And why do we suddenly need different games?

[cbreaker]

I agree with you - 25 isn't an old gamer. Not anymore.

Shit. We grew up on video games. I owned an original (woodgrain) Atari 2600, and I was very young. I was never spoiled with video games, but I do remember playing them as far back as I can remember. Just because I'm in my mid-20's now doesn't mean I'll suddenly lose interest - and it doesn't mean I need different games.

MMORPG's are a pretty new thing, really. They're not for everyone - you have to have a lot of free time to do anything meaningful in the game. If they try to dumb it down to where you don't have to put in a lot of time, it ceases to be a worthwhile MMORPG. Fortunately, for every MMORPG, there's about two hundred non-MMORPG games released; pleny for us people with full time jobs.

I think I'll always enjoy FPS games, especially team-based ones. I've always enjoyed an (offline) RPG, although nothing's been able to add up to Ultima in my eyes. So if they start trying to make new games that tailor to us "old gamers of 25 years of age" thinking that we want something different, they won't sell us any of those games.