Game Industry Facing a "Collision" With Aging Gamers

[Treblaine]

And other media didn't ever have to adapt for "ageing audience", Movies didn't suddenly have to be at a larger volume and with larger subtitle sizes and important details to counteract vision/hearing degradation.

You don't have to jump up and down for an hour to keep the movie playing.

That was a stellar failure of an example. They didn't have to change because they are not interactive media, all you do is sit and listen or sit and watch. Even there, there was change to accommodate disability: Closed captioning system ring a bell?

Well I never had to jump up and down to play Metal Gear Solid, I never had to jump up and down to play Half Life 2. In fact it seems to be only the RECENT development of Wii, Move and Natal that require much physical investment, the core of video game still don't require large and tiring motion-sensing gestures but just a keyboard + mouse or gamepad which are designed to be as easy as possible to use. Actually, the only thing requiring close to "jumping" are Dance Dance Revolution games.

But have most games not had subtitles as standard for decades now? And sorry I didn't associate that with age related hearing loss but with people who are deaf for variety of non-ageing related reasons. You want to beat me round the head with a baseball bat for that? Or maybe do you want to calm down for a sec.

Why are you getting so aggressive and combative with me when I just wanted some damn clarification of (a) what they want to be done, and (b) where they think the industry is going in the wrong direction at the moment.

First off, you are only reading what I posted as aggressive and combative. I was just pointing out that you cannot compare a non-interactive media and an interactive media. It just doesn't work that way.

What they are looking into is making games more accessible to a wider audience, one they are leaving behind with recent advancements. They are looking into way's to fix that issue. Nothing is set in stone right as of yet. Why is that an issue?

You still don't have to jump up and down to play video games.

It doesn't matter if you are school age or retirement age, physically there is no barrier to entry for video games. Absolutely nothing is stopping my Grandmother playing Call of Duty 4 or Team Fortress 2 other than her prejudice against video games that is unfortunately almost universal amongst that generation.

OK, what "recent advancements" are leaving seriously old school gamers behind, specifically? What needs to fixed? Don't tell me the graphics are getting to greater detail than old folks can see with their eyes, that would be a bit bloody patronising considering corrective lenses.

If Keith Richards can still rock out on a guitar at 66 then other 66 year olds can rock out on Guitar Hero... if that is REALLY what any of them want to do.

 

[tcurt]

'Some sort of disability' probably includes all those disabilities that the US specialise in obesity, ADD, Bi-polar and so on. As long as you have hands you can play games
and even you dont, you can play Dance Dance revolution I suppose

What if gran uses a walker? Dance pad walker adapter! Actually mine is only into square dancing, so she'll need a digital petticoat.

My dad takes a look at a controller and he is instantly turned off from playing. "Back in my day, we didn't need 13 buttons!" and all that.

It is funny to look at my Atari 2600 and it's joystick's lone button. There was rarely any confusion which one to press.

Additional benefit to a 2600 joystick: plastic so stiff that your hands got a great work-out. Better than squeezing tennis balls.

 

[tcurt]

Pfft, screw that shit. I'm rapidly approaching that age limit, and I'll still kick my grandkid's asses at Halo.

"HA, FUCKING NOOB. SUCK MY COCK. BRB GUYS, GOT PILLS TO TAKE"

That's why I'll wear adult diapers. I'd hate to have a great TF2 interrupted because I'll have to pee every 15 minutes. Seriously guys, it's coming in our futures.

 

[manaman]

Snipy

Defensive much? It's okay to be wrong, making mistakes is all part of learning. You never stop making them. In other words, if you calmed down and stopped trying so hard not to be wrong and really thought about your questions you would see the answers.

Let's start over. You compared an interactive media, with non-interactive media, and then went on to say that because the non-interactive media never made any changes to accommodate aging people that the other shouldn't as well. I am starting over because you seem fixated on my jumping up and down comment. I was simply pointing out that you don't interact with a movie, it plays on the screen and you sit back and watch. You just can't compare that with playing a game, which at any level; controller, motion sensor, motion capture, neural interface, whatever they have in the future; is controlled by a persons actions.

I further went on to point out that even through you said movies have not made any changes for age related impairments, that they in fact have; closed captioning, and earphone jacks in seat chairs are a good examples (why you would need them with the volume they play movies at these days is beyond me).

Not everyone is Keith Richards, as much as not everyone can go off and win a gold medal in the Olympics even if they put in the same level of work at getting themselves to their peek physical condition. Some people have go senial in their 60s, some live to 100 years old still mentally sound.

Now as far as age related impairments and the recent advances, well wait tell you start getting older, you will see how readily you start to lose the ability to move as quickly and precisely as some of the motion sensing and motion capture systems will/do require. As well as osteoporosis, arthritis, and on and on. Those all start to eat away at a persons dexterity and causes them to lose most of their ability to play twitchy fast paced games even with a controller; even when a person with those types of conditions still can play, it's usually not for long.

 

[Disembodied_Dave]

Hopefully they set the boundary box correctly. It would be a shame in any of the old people get stuck in the geometry.

 

[Redd the Sock]

I speak from experience that a disability can hinder gameplay. I was born with an eye condidtion making me nearsighted (uncorrectable) and have found that some things aren't as easy for me to do. I've still yet to find a successful setup that lets me see the screen and gives me range of motion to play the Wii, and the text size on games like MGS4 and GTA4 was too small for me to sucessfully read without being very clse to the screen. Needless to say, portables present larger problens. Sometimes magnifiers help, other times not.

Face it, we all get old, and the body falls apart.

 

[AMMO Kid]

I seriously laughed out loud at that last paragraph

 

[Treblaine]

Snipy

Defensive much? It's okay to be wrong, making mistakes is all part of learning. You never stop making them. In other words, if you calmed down and stopped trying so hard not to be wrong and really thought about your questions you would see the answers.

Let's start over. You compared an interactive media, with non-interactive media, and then went on to say that because the non-interactive media never made any changes to accommodate aging people that the other shouldn't as well. I am starting over because you seem fixated on my jumping up and down comment. I was simply pointing out that you don't interact with a movie, it plays on the screen and you sit back and watch. You just can't compare that with playing a game, which at any level; controller, motion sensor, motion capture, neural interface, whatever they have in the future; is controlled by a persons actions.

I further went on to point out that even through you said movies have not made any changes for age related impairments, that they in fact have; closed captioning, and earphone jacks in seat chairs are a good examples (why you would need them with the volume they play movies at these days is beyond me).

Not everyone is Keith Richards, as much as not everyone can go off and win a gold medal in the Olympics even if they put in the same level of work at getting themselves to their peek physical condition. Some people have go senial in their 60s, some live to 100 years old still mentally sound.

Now as far as age related impairments and the recent advances, well wait tell you start getting older, you will see how readily you start to lose the ability to move as quickly and precisely as some of the motion sensing and motion capture systems will/do require. As well as osteoporosis, arthritis, and on and on. Those all start to eat away at a persons dexterity and causes them to lose most of their ability to play twitchy fast paced games even with a controller; even when a person with those types of conditions still can play, it's usually not for long.

Referring to the sections I've underlined (ignoring your straw man argument at how I DARED to make the slightest comparison between interactive and non-interactive media) you talk about not moving as quickly and with as much precision?

Well let me first say that is a BIT patronising to people of retirement age, they may be getting on a bit but they're not all invalids. Though I will agree with you that these fancy motion controls that depend on gestures can FUCK RIGHT OFF. I don't want Natal, I don't want Move, I don't want Wii remote.

Why? Because they still cannot match the speed, precision and especially the EASE of a plain old USB mouse. And I know Old Age Pensioners can physically still handle a computer mouse just fine, it is the pinnacle of human interface engineering as your entire forearm rest on the table yet you can use all the muscles in your arm for control, not just focused on your thumb or wrist.

The part that I put in bold however I DO NOT agree with. Can you show me the study that reaction times significantly drop with age? Hmm? I really would like to see it, because we have already had several old gamers on here to testify that that is complete bollocks, they are still playing fast paced "twitchy" games from the evil arcade era.

And even if that was true, that reaction times did significantly drop off (mostly likely only as a symptom of another more serious nervous condition) do you really think the older generation would want games dumbed down for them? At the cost of the challenge that younger gamers want?

The solution is NOT dumbing down.

If old gamers REALLY are struggling to get those rapid kills then they can just turn the difficulty settings down, the solution is already there.

 

[manaman]

snip

Wow, you are going to have so much trouble adjusting to life after school, and if you really have already graduated, well sorry.

You may notice I didn't bother going over my counter argument again, that is because I already know you are not going to bother even with it. So have fun. Toodles.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

What kind of controllers cause "hand injury"? Are you taping razors to your 360 controller or something?

I have problems using controlers for extended periods of time because exascerbate existing hand problems (floating knuckles and a collection of poorly healed fractured) which causes most of the joints in my hands to lock up.

On the upside I have no hassles with keyboard/mouse controls (unless there's been a sudden cold snap and I need to work the stiffness out of my knuckles first).

If I ever get a time machine I'm going back to tell younger me to take fucking better care of his hands... as well as a few betting tips, fuck potential paradox problems.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

Wow, you are going to have so much trouble adjusting to life after school, and if you really have already graduated, well sorry.

You may notice I didn't bother going over my counter argument again, that is because I already know you are not going to bother even with it. So have fun. Toodles.

That's all you've got? Lame insults?

You haven't addressed a single one of the points I have challenged you over. You stated that old people don't have the reactions to play twitch video games but you fail to back it up, I interpreted you calling for games to be dumbed down and you ignore it.

I think you're dodging a real response because you know your stance is indefensible yet you are too proud to admit you are wrong. You seem to simply want to ignore what you have said and delude yourself into thinking it is a circular argument.

I have homed in on the crux of your argument, that games are an interactive medium and I have focused on the interactive part above any slight similarities over game volume and captions (seriously, games have captions and volume controls, we get it, lets move on).

Your reaction really is quite shameful how you react to my post, so patronising and passive-aggressive. It really is extraordinary.

 

[kahlzun]

My girlfriend is a wheelchair-bound midget, and she has no problem playing most games.

Though, she does struggle to hold onto the PS3 and XBOX controllers a little.

What exactly are they referring to? Large font games?

 

[manaman]

snip

Patronizing, I guess - if you want to take it that way; lame insult, not so much; passive-aggressive not at all. You keep assuming things about me, things that are not even true. Remember you read everything through your own personal filter, you are attributing emotions to me that you have no way of knowing are true or not based on how you are reading the text in your own mind.

What I said is my opinion. I formed that opinion because you have constructed counter arguments for points I never even brought up. I am not going to answer your "counter" arguments and get dragged into some kinda dick waggling contest with you. The only points I brought up in the first place are: That some people can have problems with current and planed control interfaces, and that non-interactive media is not the same as interactive media. You can't deny that, it's just a fact. Everything else is you snipping out tiny parts of a whole and trying to form some argument out of it, an argument I can't even follow with all the jumping around.

Nobody wins in an internet argument, which is all you seem to want, a discussion on the other hand I am very willing to have, provided you stop putting words in my mouth first.

 

[chronobreak]

Pardon this, but your dad sounds like a technophobe or some shit.

No, he is just 63 years old and gaming has stopped catering to his generation, which is the whole focus of the article. Just because he has a hard time with it doesn't make him a technophobe, he just misses the era when he was familiar with games and how they worked.

 

[Danpascooch]

What kind of controllers cause "hand injury"? Are you taping razors to your 360 controller or something?

I have problems using controlers for extended periods of time because exascerbate existing hand problems (floating knuckles and a collection of poorly healed fractured) which causes most of the joints in my hands to lock up.

On the upside I have no hassles with keyboard/mouse controls (unless there's been a sudden cold snap and I need to work the stiffness out of my knuckles first).

If I ever get a time machine I'm going back to tell younger me to take fucking better care of his hands... as well as a few betting tips, fuck potential paradox problems.

Interesting, I never have any problems with controllers, but I got hit with tendinitis in both wrists because of the way I used the keyboard.

 

[Low Key]

That's assuming the older generation still plays video games.

My dad used to be addicted to Ski Free and other games back in the 70s and he had a waning interest in the NES for a time, but he has zero interest in video games these days. One of my coworkers who has kids bought a PS3 for the family and he sometimes plays it, but he's more into the visuals than the gameplay. I had him try Portal and he seemed interested in that, but even by the turret levels, he barely had a grasp on the controls.