The gaming market is so oversaturated that there’s something for everyone, even old people. There are so many games that don’t require fast reflexes.
I mean I’m early 50s, so a bit below one of their thresholds, but still in the “older gamers, 40, 50, 60…” bracket used elsewhere in that article.
I’m not sure what’s underserved. There are shitloads of games out there that I’m happy to play. Sure, I’ll nostaglia myself into a coma playing Infocom games in bed on my laptop. But I’ll also sink hours into a good story or walking sim, the single-player campaigns of an FPS, a puzzle game or hell, I’ll keep the kids off my lawn in Fortnite and have fun making them cry. How am I underserved?
What makes a game “for retired people”?
What a silly premise.
Serious answer? By making a game that targets a vulnerable group that preys on loneliness and declining mental capacity. This speaks less about “what games would old people play and enjoy” and more about “how to leverage abusive techniques to maximize the extraction of wealth”.
Oof. I can respect your cynicism though.
Candy crush is already a thing
Wait, but that’s also young people!
They don’t say this in the article…out loud. But it is mostly about how they have a large disposable income so it is 100% what they mean.
My thoughts as well.
Old people like the same shit as young people when it comes to gaming. Ever played D&D?
I thought that was just CRPGs? I swear half of the modern CRPG fanbase are white hairs.
Yeah they have. They’re the same fucking games as before. If you’re not a gamer by the time you’re over 65, odds are good that you’re not gonna suddenly become one.
My 76 year old aunt is active in her local veteran’s hall. One of the younger vets brought in a gaming pc and demoed some games. My aunt was stoked. She immediately got a discord account and is shopping new laptops so she can play some games.
If the old aren’t gamers already, often having someone show them in person can flip that switch. Their meeting hall has a couple pc’s available and they’re talking about upgrading them for LAN parties.
Games are marketed at the young. But retirees have free time. Marketing games to older folks makes sense.
Yeah but for everyone like that there’s one or more like my mother (that’s demonic) or dad (what’s going on, you keep switching too fast, what is that, etc…?)
Ok brb making a game about being a self righteous asshole boomer who is always correct and its actually everyone else’s fault that he has no friends and his wife and kids dont speak with him.
Call it Boomer Shooter, but its not an FPS, its actually primarily a series of small adventure/puzzle levels with complex branching dialogue options.
You get points for shooting down ideas you either didn’t think of first or don’t like because they might imply that you aren’t perfect.
The rules are made up and the points don’t matter beyond a high score at the end of the bad ending.
The good ending happens when you don’t get that many points, despite the game constantly handholding you and telling you thats what you should focus on.
There, enjoy your retirement.
EDIT:
The DLC will add the ability to play as a privileged white woman who gets points for morally policing everyone around her but herself, spreading misinformation, and guilt tripping people who trust her.
EDIT 2:
In case I’m not being clear enough, a Boomer that wants a video game for their enfeebled retired ass can fucking make it themselves, and/or possibly think about why it is the case that the industry has enshittified to the extent that it has.
Who is it exactly thats in charge of all these enshittifying gaming companies again? Oh right yeah, its your 401ks, teaching children how to love their gambling addiction, so that you can retire well.
I mean, it can’t be that hard, right? To make a toy that satifies Boomers? Just bootstrap it yourselves, I’m sure you’ll discover that if you just shake a few hands and burn a few hundred million dollars, it’s just about showing up and doing the job well, or something.
… you want a Boomer game?
It already exists, its Candy Crush, its Words with Friends, its Scrabble Go, its Solitaire.
That’s not even an insult, that’s just literally market research data.
They are making games for retirees
AARP.com has a long list of games, and all the leaderboards resets everyday at midnight.
My grandma, who has dementia, and severe arthritis, has an alarm to get up at midnight to go play the games so she can be #1. Every night. She loves being #1.
She’s 82 years old. Just broke her hip for the 3rd time, and she asked if we can bring her laptop so she can play her games.
I’m gonna pwn your grandma no cap
Bet
there aremore than enough games in circulation to keep retired people entertained forever
Bullshit. Plenty of games oldnpeople can enjoy.
Balatro
Stardew Valley
Peglin
New heroes of might and magic
XCOM
Civilization
Flight Simulator (plus a ton of all the other sim games on the market).
Man I’ve seen my fair share of old people rocking it to Best Saber and and Synth Riders. Just play on the right difficulty…
My grandpa played Flight Simulator every day until he passed away at 100. He loved that game.
(40m) It’s funny, I haven’t touched any of the versions since 5.0.
It looks so complicated nowadays.
I played version 10 (FSX) back in the days and it had an excellent progressive tutorial. You can also set the realism level and you can select simpler propeller airplanes.
what the fuck? isn’t the dark souls for retired people… just dark souls?
Games are overwhelmingly made by and marketed to younger generations, argue analysts, while the older demographic is being ignored
They’re busy playing the stuff of their young days.
Any game that relies too much on quick reflexes will usually not be good for older people. Easier difficulties can mitigate that somewhat. Turn based games are perfect for all ages, you can take as long as you want to think your stuff through. You don’t need to make these games “for old people”. I also remember seeing a video that talked about a 70yo man who began playing Asheron’s Call (a 1999 MMORPG) with his grandson and really enjoyed the game, to the point he kept playing until it was shutdown for good.[1]
The industry has spent 40 years chasing the same narrowly defined audience because it was the safest bet, until everyone was chasing it. Imagine if Hollywood only made movies for 18-year-old men. That’s roughly the bet games have been making.
True for big studios, false for indies, who, as always, prove time and time again that you can achieve success with “non standard” formulas, such as Balatro, Stardew Valley, Return of the Obra Dinn, Undertale (some survivorship bias is being applied here, lots of indies, even those that follow “standard formulas” more closely, fail to find success, even with good games)
There is a mismatch between the general investment in tutorials for the first few minutes, relative to where actually the player loss happens,
Make the fucking tutorial OPTIONAL and something you pick as an option in the fucking main menu. This isn’t rocket science.
But that brings you down to other categories that have been growing, like cosy[sic] games, casual games, and retro. And retro has an advantage in that audience in that you don’t need the latest [computer].
There is an important thing to keep in mind here: most casual games are predatory mobile shit. That market has been an absolute cesspool for something like 12 years now, which is almost as long as they existed. Yes, the games are “enjoyable”, because they’ve been finely tuned to be as addictive as possible.
“Give me those 60 year olds who watched Star Trek the original series,” he concludes. “Come on down, play Star Trek Online with me.”
STO? Pass. Unless we can kill this dude:
Found this massivelyop link, but the video is unavailable https://massivelyop.com/2017/01/11/check-out-one-of-the-oldest-asherons-call-players-in-all-senses-of-the-word/ ↩︎
Make the fucking tutorial OPTIONAL and something you pick as an option in the fucking main menu. This isn’t rocket science.
The article isn’t saying you lose players in the tutorial, you lose the much farther in when the level 9 boss too hard to beat for someone who stepped away from the game for 2 weeks.
A lot of people would probably like an optional tutorial, but it’s not the point they are trying to make.
I understand that, but a lot of gamers can figure some games out without a forced tutorial. WASD movement, jump with space, crouch with control, sprint with shift, move camera with mouse, shoot/attack with left click, etc. A lot of designers/developers became so desperate with the possibility that their game might be “someone’s first game of that type” that they choose to force everyone to play the tutorial right at the start, even players that finished the game and decided to start again, and leave it at that.
The tutorial as a main menu option fixes both problems.
I don’t see how the tutorial as a main menu option fixes the problem of someone who played for a while, then had to walk away for two weeks only to come back and have to deal with the ninth boss with degraded skills.
- “I don’t remember how to do that thing, I remember the tutorial showed that”
- Go to tutorial
- Relearn
- Load game back to where you were
The alternative is the tutorial being accessible from within the game, like a manual. In no case the solution is “force the tutorial at the beginning of the game”
The skills learned in the tutorial aren’t the ones that are forgotten when you take two weeks off late in the game. Redoing a tutorial wouldn’t be the solution.
They’re playing MMOs. I am currently playing a game with a group of people and the ages range from 35 to 80. Game has been operating for 24 years at this point. Several retired during that time.
And how has Eve been treating you?
Worse than his boss but that’s a given.
FFXI in this case 😆
I’m not sure having games made for you would be better than having games you can play. There’s plenty of shit out there that’s not marketed towards me anymore, but I still enjoy it. And yes, it’s rarely AAA games. Even more enjoyable AND cheaper.
Why would retired people need their own video games?
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I thought that when you turn 40 they just give you a copy of Tetris The Grand Master and that’s all you get to play for the rest of your life?
I still like my 3D Tetris, though. I was just never able to beat my record that i scored in 1995.
Tetris effect and lumines rise are the replacements.
Perhaps unusually, I plan to take up gaming when I’m older, having never seriously tried it. I’m 48. I work in IT and I’m a nerd for retro computing, but beyond 16-bit platform shooters and Lemmings, I have barely dipped my toe into gaming culture. At work, I feel like an Irishman who’s never tried Guinness.
I’ve avoided it for two reasons. One is a mental block: a strange and unjustified prejudice against gaming culture. In 90s rural Scotland, where I was raised, you had to fight hard for your place in the social pecking order. I enjoyed football, but my friends were nerds, and I preferred their company to that of the jocks, so I chose my tribe early.
When puberty hit hard, I was already at a disadvantage by not being into sports. I loved my Atari ST, but I was socially aware enough to know that that definitely wasn’t going to attract girls. Fortunately, I also loved music. Nirvana was getting big, and I was hooked. Drinking, smoking, and playing in bands were my thing, and they held strong social currency for a self-conscious kid.
As a result, an almost pathological fear of being judged kept me from getting involved. I missed the whole GTA thing and, except for a bit of Portal, never bothered with it.
I also know that I’m quite prone to addiction, so if I were into gaming, it would eat my life.
So, when I do finally retire and find I’m unable to do much, that’s when I’ll jump on. I’ll be the oldest noob in town and I’m kind of looking forward to it.
ty for sharing this
