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Gaming When We're 64
Via Kotaku, a post on the Aeropause site about gaming as we get older. Richard has a great 'get off my lawn you damn kids' rant, and some insightful commentary on the problems we'll face as we get up there. From the article: "The other issue older gamers will face is the ever increasing difficulty of games. Games have come a long way since the simplicity of the A and B buttons. Today's controllers are becoming more and more complicated and require greater dexterity to master. While this is no problem for gamers right now, as we get older and lose some of our dexterity we will need to come up with ways to simplify the gameplay or the controller."
Since when don't older people play video games?
I may be a young whippersnapper and know nothing about being "old", but my parents and grandmother play computer games. My mother loves Simcity. Do the big console companies not realize that the over-30 market is...well, huge? Back in the NES days, adults would actually play the console games. Maybe its just my experience, but that doesn't seem to be the case any more.
I don't know why that is, but I have a feeling the complexity of modern games and the reliance of so many games on reflexes (read first person shooters) puts a lot of would be casual gamers; I believe most people over thirty could be classified as the casual gamer type. Whatever happened to the trivia, puzzle and strategy games adults seem to love?
Maybe Nintendo's Wii will work its way into this market.
My dad just retired, and he's been playing and loving Diablo-style games since, well, Diablo. He has played any number of knockoffs, and seems to have found a new one every time I visit. In addition to those, he spends a fair amount of time playing RPGs and adventure games. He saves early, and saves often.
He also really takes his time. It's no race for him, and he doesn't have a problem returning to old saves. He's played Guid Wars with my brother and I, but he doesn't chat because he can't type that fast (I haven't got him set up on Ventrilo yet, bad son). He tried DAoC and EQ2, but he just doesn't like grouping with people because he'd rather take his time.
I'm guessing that as I/we get older, we'll look for games where we can take our time too.
From TFA:
Obviously the Wii is something that could be improved upon over the years, and just might become the senior's console of choice.
As Nintendo has already stated older gamers is one of their targeted demographics with the Wii, I believe we'll see less dependence on buttons and a stronger focus on immersion in games as motion control and "VR" type systems get better and cheaper. The gaming system in 20-40 years may have no buttons whatsoever.
Trying to predict anything about life in 20 years, much less technology, is a total crapshoot.
Today's controllers are becoming more and more complicated and require greater dexterity to master.
I see one right there. The Wii is clearly an example of a controller that's actually become *less* complex compared to it's contemporaries. Frankly, I think we've seen the peak of controller complexity.