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.

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: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

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.