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.

[incubusnb]

I'm 25 and as far as my Dad is concerned, 16 is too old to play Games. He still doesn't accept my hobby and asks me on several occasions when I plan to get rid of my consoles. I just tell him i'm getting a few more soon, to which he grunts and tells me to grow up.

People just don't understand.

Re:Old gamers? I must be ancient.

[magicRob]

Well anyone born before 1980 is too old to game ;) I'm part of a group (no we're not a clan, clans are for young people) called Below Eighty (eg born before 1980). Most of the people are married, have kids and game for fun rather than anything competitive... And if we do have gaming get togethers, it involves more drinking than gaming :)

Re:Old gamers? I must be ancient.

[DragonTHC]

maybe he wants you to get rid of the stuff so he has more room around his house.

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.

Re:Old gamers? I must be ancient.

[Hello Kitty]

I'm *way* the hell past college and I still get that. (Oddly enough, though, if I'm on her computer *fixing* the wretched thing, that's work!) I'm a writer, so maybe what I need to do next time I'm home is whip out a pad and pencil... better yet, I'm gonna hook up some foolscap and a quill... yeah, that'll do it. Programmers, though, hmm -- maybe an abacus? Bunch of slips of papers with ONE and ZERO written on them? Large bucket marked "BITS"?

Re:Old gamers? I must be ancient.

[Yo Grark]

In HIS defence, he spelled intoxicated wrong too, it's D-R-U-N-K and only applied liberally to the eastern & northern provinces and territories!

Geez, not all us Canadians are Hosers eh?

Yo Grark

Re:Old gamers? I must be ancient.

[incubusnb]

how do you explain Ralph Klein then?

not too old

[hb253]

I'm 41 and play Counter Strike Source on a daily basis. I am not too old to play.

Re:not too old

[CaptSnuffy]

I'm 8 years old and playing on xbox live right now screaming at my mom for some chocolate milk You see, gaming is the one place where young and old can come together to have fun in a mature and relaxing way.

Re:not too old

[symbolic]

I am upwards of 30 and I still enjoy firing up Vice City to raise HELL once in a while. I've also started Prince of Persia- granted my pace is somewhat slow, but I have other things going on so my time is limited. I've played WoW. Lineage2, America's Army, Planetside, and others. Games are something I enjoy, so I don't see putting the kibosh on playing them just because of some arbitrary age thing. I remember one guy playing AA was in his 70s.

I'm too old...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to use numbers instead of words and pluralize with a 'Z'.

funniest Article title ever!

[incubusnb]

are you serious?
"An Interview With 2old2play's Doodi"

who is this 2old2play and why are we interviewing his "Doodi"?

Re:funniest Article title ever!

[jaredmcook]

I think the title really stinks, personally.

50 may be the new 30

[RLiegh]

but TFA makes it clear that in the gaming world; 25 is the new 60!

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.

Re:On getting a life

[daspriest]

Can you describe this thing you call a "life??"

Re:On getting a life

[Mr2001]

Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates attracts gamers of all ages without resorting to those tactics.

Play time is unlimited, however, the doubloon system allows players to essentially trade money for time. There are two currencies: pieces of eight, which flow freely from NPCs and admin-sponsored tournaments, and doubloons, which only enter the economy when they're purchased with real dollars. The prices for most items are set in both POE and doubloons, the doubloons disappear from the economy as soon as they're spent, and POE can be traded for doubloons on an open market. So if you want to buy that fancy sword, you can either play for a couple weeks to save up POE and trade some of them for doubloons, or spend a couple bucks for a handful of doubloons and trade some of them for POE. The players with money but no time subsidize the ones with time but no money.

Neither POE nor doubloons are finite, but they exit the system regularly, and inflation hasn't been a problem. The economy stays balanced by changing tax rates, changing spawn rates for raw commodities, and providing plenty of opportunities for money to be lost/spent and leave the economy.

Paying to play is entirely optional, at least on doubloon servers (there are also servers where monthly subscriptions replace doubloons). If you don't have the time or money to get doubloons, many parts of the game are closed off to you, but you can still have fun.

Linux is supported, and mentioned on the box, because the game's written in Java. (You can even run it on a Mac and play a special bonus game, "watch the colorful spinning beachball", that isn't available on either Linux or Windows!)

Of course, another big factor that attracts older players is the gameplay itself. You don't need the quick reflexes or hand-eye coordination of someone who grew up playing Nintendo, because everything is a puzzle game, from sailing to swordfighting. If you can play Bejeweled, you can help run a ship.

Re:On getting a life

[cheezitmike]

Of course, another big factor that attracts older players is the gameplay itself. You don't need the quick reflexes or hand-eye coordination of someone who grew up playing Nintendo, because everything is a puzzle game, from sailing to swordfighting. If you can play Bejeweled, you can help run a ship.

I'm 31, and Puzzle Pirates is the only multiplayer on-line game that I've enjoyed in years. The fact that the gameplay doesn't require twitchy-reflexes or level-grinding is the most significant reason. There's plenty to do when I log on and I feel like I'm accomplishing something in the game, even if I can only play 2 hours in a given week. I can climb the social and economic ladder in the game without devoting my life to it. Your character is as skilled as you are at the puzzles... if you can master the "swordfighting" puzzle in 30 minutes (perhaps because you grew up on a steady diet of puzzle games like tetris and minesweeper), you're on par with the 13 year old who played 40 hours a week to get that good. In other games, he'd be level 80 and I'd be level 10, and I'd stand no chance in a fight because of all the level-based stats and special bonus items he'd have time to accumulate.

/.'ed

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, you're never 2old to be /.'ed!

Damn kids

[Rodness]

A 26yo declaring that anyone over 25 is "too old"? Let me be the first to stand up and yell "stupid young whippersnapper!"

*sigh* Kids these days...

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.

This is so timely (for me anyway)

[conteXXt]

Today I was playing some Enemy Territory (Sniper mod) for a few hours.

Server was a Clan branded one, and a few of the members joined in the frag fest (well as much of a fest as sniper mod can be, but I digress).

To my surprise, they asked me to try out for their clan.

My response? How late do you play as I am old (well not really but I have responsibilities)

Average age of the clan? 32.

That was a surprise to me.

I guess certain games attract different age groups (duh) but I would have thought that a *clan* would generally be younger folks.

Anyone else have this experience?

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.

old timer finds new game

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an old timer. I recently found a very challenging game, exciting, and fraught with risk. The game is called Automatic Transmission. Take it apart. Try to put it back together. Hope that it works. Fun.

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/

25? Old? I'd say ideal

[ddx Christ]

I found it sort of strange that they referred to 25 as being old, senior citizen old. When I played Star Wars Galaxies (before it tanked), the average age for guild members was in the ~23-26 range. Most had jobs, a couple had children, a lot had wives/girlfriends.

I think I was the only one under 18 at the time (2 years back, I turn 18 this month). Most players that were in my age group were incredibly annoying; there's no doubt in my mind that the guild just wanted a more mature gaming group.

Granted, I no longer play MMORPGs as they take too much time. They suck the life blood out of me. I prefer just kicking back on less time consuming games, and my ideal teammate/opponent is usually a bit older than I am just for the sake of a greater chance of it being more fun (or tolerable).

I don't play games

[JCOTTON]

...haven't played any computer game since Trek on a PDP-11. 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. Afterall, sitting in front of a tube is sitting in front of a tube. I do that 8 hours a day. But I get big bucks for it.
Can I rant on crossword puzzles too? Basically, supporting old apps is the same as a giant crossword puzzle. Think about it. When was the last time you got paid to do a crossword?

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.

Re:I don't play games

[titzandkunt]

"... 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..."

If you love your kids, then for God's sake don't be saying shit like that around them!

When your dog bites someone and has to be destroyed, you tell your kid that it's gone to live on a farm where it can chase rabbits all day without getting in trouble.

Say your kid catches you downing your first stiff scotch of the day at 08:30. You tell them its "special medicine" for grownups.

Your wife boots you out, so you tell the kid that mommy and daddy are going to spend a little time apart so they don't yell at each other so much.

- These are all inconsequential, harmless, miniscule white lies compared to the black, satanic, evil untruth that software development is a desirable and highly-paid profession.

T&K.

Re:Wow

[nzgeek]

I am also disappointed with the bitching here on slashdot regarding the article

I guess you're new here?

Do people read the articles?

[jayintune]

25 seems to be the base for the site. I took some time to check out the users and most of them are in their 30's and 40's. Seems like a place to get away from the cheating, screaming, kids of the gaming world. Im on similar sites for ps2 and I think there should be more of them. Having a site for all consoles and PC seems like a good idea.

Re:I really hope

[know1]

i agree completely! i wish my father could play video games with any skill, it would give us at least one thing to talk about. however one of my uncles, i have happily spent many evenings laughing cheerfully as we killed prostitutes in GTA:San Andreas. truly, when this last gap is gone and everyone plays games, it will return to a more family time, with more leisure time spent together. i look forward to killing prostitutes with my own son/daughter (heh, just had to go back and add /daughter, guess i just learned something about my hopes for the future) in a cyber worldthat sounds like a joke but i'm deadly serious

Re:The name "Doodi"

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] and by the time their old they have two many contacts [...]

That sentence fragment makes my eyes bleed.

Bring back adventure games!

[nighty5]

I'm 30 years old, but I remember playing the my first Sierra game, Kings Quest .

From a very early age I was programming, TRS80's etc. Lucky my old man was a programmer, we had all types of all gear lying about.

My Favourites were:
Space Quest
Police Quest
Hero's Quest
Leisure Suit Larry
And last but not least: Zork

I am disappointed to see they no longer make such games, now moving to more action type games. Adventure games were cool.

2old my arse

[ross.w]

I'm over 40, and I regularly play Lego Starwars with my 7yo son (highly rcommended game btw). And I play Doom 3 after he's gone to bed.

Since when was there an age limit?

I see a great need

[schnitzi]

EA Sports presents: "Extreme Shuffleboard".

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.

never to old to game.

[Brtchlin]

my husband and i are clan gamers. mostly battlefield 2 for us and the rest of our clan plays everything from WoW, GuildWars, i've even seen them playing StarCraft. our clan caters to the older crowd. my husband is 47, and he's not the oldest member of the clan. http://www.elderwolves.com/ sure we do have younger people playing with us, but thier mostly very respectful. to be honest, i really do not think gaming is strictly for the youngin's, nor is gaming strictly gender bound. for the longest time i thought i was the only woman playing FPS games untill very recently. stop by the site, were always looking for new recruits. i know i'm going to get yelled at for getting the site /.ed but thats ok, they will forgive me eventually.

He must have missed that the average gamer....

[Vermifax]

He must have missed that the average gamer is his age or older. Us mid 20s - mid 30s ARE the target market. Video games since we grew up with them and have disposable cash.

Re:Wow

[NewmanBlur]

As I'm writing, this article has received 151 replies, mostly from gamers 25 - 40. Many of the responses seem to indicate that this group of people is intersted in an online community tailored to the interests of adult gamers, but dislikes the insinuation that being over 25 makes them "too old" to play games. That's what I've gotten out of the posts I've read, which isn't all of them.

If we assume that no one posted more than one reply, then 150 users are on this thread -- a group equal to 5% of your current membership (3000, according to the interview). A decent /. thread can pick up 500-600 responses, so this figure could grow to 18%-20% of your membership. And I would venture to say that the vast majority of this group is right in your target demographic -- and probably not regular users of your website.

So my question to you is: if you really want to grow to 10,000 users,rather than being "disappointed with the bitching" wouldn't it make more sense to listen?

Re:Why is this article posted?

[bigman2003]

I liked Doodi's response when they asked him when the site started..

v.: So the site opened in August 2005?
D.: Yeah, around then... it's up for debate, no one really remembers...

Dude(ie)- it's only been FIVE MONTHS! Why can't anyone remember? And besides, you're a big-time web programmer, go look at the date your first files were created.