Gray gamers
(Visited 7152 times) Game talk
Oct 302006
Today, a couple of articles about the aging audience for new media and games in particular strike a chord.
Nintendo actually ran demos at an AARP event, apparently.
When I look at games and think about the pressures of aging and how they have affected me, here’s the things that I think about:
- Less time to play. The last game I played was Marble Blast Ultra on XBox Live. Why? Because I could pick it up without going to a store, could play through 1/3 of the game in a couple of hours, and could drop it at a moment’s notice in order to get the kids to bed.
- Less reliance on reflexes. We’re getting old, OK? Just looking at the high scores on Live is enough to discourage me from playing certain games ever again.
- Less random sexism and violence. Older folks have, well, better taste, in a lot of ways (at least until they cross the invisible line into “boring pabulum.” 😉 ) I’d like something with some depth and meat to it, not just explosions.
- Family-friendly themes. I haven’t picked up Bully because I know I’ll never get a moment to play it when the kids won’t be able to see it. This is also why I have hardly played the GTA games.
- More mainstream themes. Older gamers want more kinds of topics beyond aliens and elves. We see this greater breadth showing up in the theming of casual puzzle games there days, with tons of mythological references, historical references, and so on.
- Less learning curve. This is tightly tied to the time thing, but in a nutshell, any game which presumes five years of expertise playing previous games in the genre is not going to fly. This is why the RTS market is kinda inaccessible to me right now.
It isn’t surprising that MMOs have traditionally hit a bit wider demo than many console games, given that by nature, they cover some of the above. In other areas, though, they are if anything even worse than the mainstream games biz.
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definite win conditions (versus the other games which fizzle out by agreement once the top player has an overwhelming lead over the others). Each game is supposed to last about 2 to 3 months, and involve 10 to 100 players. Part of my (and that of many other adult gamers
definite win conditions (versus the other games which fizzle out by agreement once the top player has an overwhelming lead over the others). Each game is supposed to last about 2 to 3 months, and involve 10 to 100 players. Part of my (and that of many other adult gamers
True story.
Just last night my best friend (40 yo) and i were watching some James bond.
I asked him if he had played any of the bond series of games.
he said “Yeah, someone had left a copy here and I started a game, got killed about 20 times and then just went back to work”.
He owns his own business
The keywords for me and my next MMO is going to be accessibility and flexibility.
And sadly, for what is known to the public, the next 2-3 years of MMOs are looking pretty bleak for me. None of the upcoming releases in the next 6 months-ish look appealing. At all.
I’d also add:
Quality over quantity – A huge dungeon filled with hoards of wandering monsters (aka: Wizardry I… or any WoW dungeon) kept me entertained as a teenager. I find it completely boring now, even with the latest graphics.
Owning a house and having a pet are not interesting – I already have a house and a pet in real life… and decided that the real ones are enough work. I don’t need virtual ones on top of that.
Games that you can play with your children/spouse
I don’t want to play any more games where I need 39 friends to succeed or to advance. I want a game where the entire experience (all the way through the end-game, including the best loot) is accessible to me and a handful of friends. I want a MORPG.
I agree with the owning a house thing. By the time we see Aragorn at home, all the exciting stuff has happened, and the trilogy is over. Despite the housing market, home ownership is not an adventure.
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For all you young fortyish whippersnappers: the only thing that changes when you hit the late fifties is that you don’t have to worry as much about what the kids can see on the screen over your shoulder 🙂
Oh yeah, your reflexes aren’t even as good as at 40 🙂
So Raph, I lost interest in console games a long time ago, are MMO’s ever gonna discover my demographic?
I hope to. 🙂 What would you say are the key elements that I’d need to be aware of for your demographic, as opposed to my own (35)?
There’s a lady in my EQ2 guild that’s a grandmother. You wouldn’t know it to talk with her, she spends most of her time acting like she’s about 23. She’s a huge flirt actually. But sometimes she’ll talk about how her daughter and her son-in-law are coming over and they’re bringing the baby too.
If I had to guess at it, here’s what I would say are the important things for her demographic.
– House ownership/socialization/virtual world. While she likes adventuring, she also loves to show off her house. I think this is more of a male/female thing than it is an age-related thing maybe.
– Being able to get started quickly. Often she only has an hour or two to play before her husband gets home, or before company shows up in real life. Long travel times, or having to wait for other people to log on, frustrate her.
– Being able to do things with small groups. Along the same lines, she doesn’t like to solo much, but if she can get one or two others and go accomplish something then she’s quite happy.
– Being able to share bits of her real life with her online friends. She is one of several guild members we have who invite everyone else in the guild to come see their MySpace pages.
Again, not all of that is really related to age. In fact, I think the biggest thing that happens with age is the time limitation. When I was in college my average play session was 8 hours. After college it was 6 hours. Now I’m 30 and it’s down to about 3 hours and not every day either. If I ever manage to get married and have kids I’m sure it will shrink further. Every older player I’ve talked to in MMOs, with the exception of one guy who was just wealthy and didn’t have anything else to do, all seem to share the frustration that comes with not being able to commit as much time to the game as younger people with fewer responses can. However, at the same time, they still want a lot of depth, a huge world to explore, and a high challenge level. Many of these people seem more drawn to VW-type MMOs rather than gamey MMOs, though since I prefer VWs myself, my experience is probably skewed.
To give a more concrete idea of what they’d like – a lot of them are very interested in Vanguard’s feature list, but they are all very concerned about the perception that it’s a “hardcore” game. They equate “hardcore” with requiring long contiguous play sessions.
Anyway, that’s just my experience on the topic. I hardly think I count as gray, but I can definitely see the point of view of many players older than myself.
I’m over 50. The things I want are centered around depth. I love history and lore, and mistery centered around that. This is mainly because I’ve developed an interest in RL things like this. But I don’t think age really has anything to do with it, I started to appreciate these things when talking to college friends I met playing D+D way back when.
I do see age more like aged wine, but the wine is still wine even without aging. I told a story about myself and my son here recently, about developing interests in things. I think the interest is there in a wide range of topics, but untill someone meets the topic and is entertained by it, they don’t know what they are missing. I see the MMO industry and it’s players in this light.
I do like customizable housing, as I also have an interest in architecture, and especially the marvels of ancient construction. This ties into the historical thing, the Masons and all, as well as the Pyramids, etc. But also the beauty of creating something grand. This has alot to do with a desire for player built cities too.
Social aspects are important, being a part of something with other players. I really enjoyed my time in a guild in early UO, when having friends was important due to PKers. Since then, guilds don’t mean much except for “raids” and such. But that kind of play doesn’t do it for me. I also have noticed quite alot of transient activity these days, due to lack of meaning in guilds. This is a turn off.
I don’t mind at all travel times. I prefer it. The more realistic approach means more challenge. I don’t care if I have to log in just to travel from point A to B so that I can do what I had in mind at point B another time. I do want the trip to be a challenge in itself, an adventure, maybe even a detour in my explorations. I want depth and meaning.
Again, I don’t think this is an age issue though. I think it’s more an experiance issue. Players who don’t want more depth, more challenge, they come in all ages. Same with the reverse, assuming they have a chance to experiance it in the first place.
Your initial list is a good inventory; in many ways your demographic is the same as mine. Personally, I think the big transitions are fulltime employment, marriage, and children. As others pointed out [and the first item on your list] these things have a big impact on the time available for recreation.
Where the extra 20 years make a difference are in the age of my children compared to yours. We had kids late so they are still at home but I don’t really worry very much what they’ll see looking over my shoulder. I’d guess that lots of people my age are empty-nesters so the over-the-shoulder issue is even less important. There are also physiological differences, your fast-twitch muscles aren’t likely to improve as you noted. Chances are that your vision will deteriorate, I believe there is a general tendency towards increasing far-sightedness. The declining reflexes means that twitch games will probably be even less appealing 20 years from now. Whether or not vision dfferences matter for things like interface design is well beyond me.
I’m really encouraged that you’re interested in my/our demographic. It’s a youth oriented culture but when you look at income distributions we should get more attention 🙂
The large guild Ive belonged to for 10+ years has quite a few people over 40, a few 50+ and I know of one 73 year old. Suprisingly many are PVP oriented (and very skilled).
To me this just means Gamers come in all forms, from casual to hardcore, from 12-73, and with various income levels. Which is fantastic for the genre as a whole.
I was having an email conversation with a well known fantasy writer who’s going to help me organize some aspects of what we’re doing on our project, shes easily in Jujutsu’s demographic, but her worldview really transcends age. So even gaming and sci-fi are irrelavent when it comes to age/demographics in many ways.
I think you have a fairly accurate list going though.
I see a dilemma here (and i’m also interested in your demographic, JuJustu 🙂 ) of design which can be rewarding in short periods of time. In orde to just “pick up and play”, one tends to immediately look away from standard diku-type models since the Levelling Game is, as Hades pointed out elsewhere, merely a means of extending character creation way beyond normal limits especially in a game where levels eventually reach an end. Therefore, one would normally look to the competitor of levelling games, the twitch-based “Okay, tutorial done, let’s play” model.
Declining reflexes (if they really are an issue – Old Granny Hardcore doesn’t seem to think so) could mean that this alternative is also of limited value. Have you tried Planetside? How do you get along with Prince of Persia-style platformers?
I love Planetside. I think the reason it is appealing despite my dismal reflexes is that there are so many ways to play that don’t require fast reflexes. In my experience much of the game is not 2 people madly strafing and shooting at each other. I generally play a stealther that preys on other [impatient] stealthers and snipers. There’s certainly skill involved but it’s not who fastest at hitting A-D-A-D-A. There’s also opportunity to work in a squad so that teamwork trumps reflexes. I know people who claim it’s ‘not really’ a FPS for that reason; I find it appealing for that reason.
I belong to a meta-guild http://www.theoldergamers.com/
that has roughly 10,000 members. TOG has hundreds of people over 40 and quite a few in the 50’s and 60’s; I’m nowhere close to being the oldest geezer 🙂
It covers 11 games in the FPS division, 8 in the mmorpg division, and a smattering of others. As you can see, PvP is VERY popular. I think the reason is because good teamwork can trump fast reflexes, at least that’s what I hear from players in the other FPS games. I know it’s true in Planetside. I don’t think combat-centered PvP has to equate to twitch based play. I think good game designers [the people that hang out here for example 🙂 ] can definitely make PvP that would appeal to grey gamers. Whether or not the same mechanics would appeal to my 16 year old son is another story, I got him to try Planetside but after a week he went back to Guild Wars.
I have to say, reading this makes me very happy. The PvP we’re attempting to implement owes far more to Splinter Cell than to CounterStrike, so age and treachery should be extremely exploitable.
Thanks – now i can sleep tonight!
My first grey hairs having showed up tell me it might be time to check out theoldergamers.com. And I’m just waiting for some kids to get on my lawn so I can yell for them to get off it for the first time.