So, hear me out.
I’m a 47 year old guy and I’m not ashamed to say that I enjoy video games. I always have, from playing Head over Heels on a Speccy +2 to ESO and Valorant on my self built PC.
Due to various life circumstances, I’m also on the dating scene and to most women I meet, around my age, video games are anathema. When I say that I like them it’s usually meet with an “oh dear” or a “my son would probably love to talk to you about them, I find them really boring”
I have two boys, both teenagers, both play all the time and sometimes we all play together (although they are better as they have more time to apply to games). Their friends are amazed that I will talk about games with them, that I know someone about games and that I play games. None of their parents want to talk with them about what is effectively their main hobby that they do all the time (big sad).
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?
I don’t have an answer, I just think it’s an interesting question. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!
Edit to add: I’m not planning on stopping through peer pressure, just wondering about the phenomenon!
I think it’s generational. When I talk to folks about gaming in their early-mid 30’s, the majority of them either also game, or at least don’t think it’s weird. Video games and board games too.
I think once you hit that rough age cutoff for millennials, late 30’s-early 40’s it seems video gaming and board gaming also largely falls off. At least that’s been my experience.
My spouse and I are in our 30’s and most of our peers game. Keep it up and never stop having fun!
Gen X-er here, and video gaming was a pretty huge part of a lot of our childhoods, too! The heyday of the video game arcade, Atari, Amiga, NES, and more. Given that, I’d expect folks as old as late 50s to have grown up gaming.