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’m in agreement with most here. There doesn’t need to be a cutoff age. My dad is in his 70s and is super excited for the new Final Fantasy coming out.
It took me a minute to come back around to gaming because, I thought being mature meant having different hobbies, or suppressing my desire to indulge in “childish” things. Hell, I was that dude that bailed on my friends who still played dungeons and dragons because we were supposed to be growing into mature adults and mature adults don’t play pretend.
Now I’m like, love the things you love.
Unabashedly.
It can be a little knife to your soul when you meet someone that you think you like and they belittle something you’re into, but, in my book, properly decent people don’t do that. Decent people don’t shit on you for being excited about something or for being interested in a hobby (unless your “hobby” is something that harms people or your environment). I like to think that decent people will try to understand what you like about the things you like.
It takes a lot for a person to be vulnerable and say, “this is a thing I like.” People who are worth your time will respect that vulnerability.
I’m impressed you can keep up with the kids playing Valo and Apex, I get dogwalked in most FPS games because I’m a slow old man. Lol.
This is still the reason I don’t really talk about my gaming hobbies with a lot of people, though I know I should not be ashamed of it, especially nowadays.
I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a conversation with a coworker talking about golf or sports, so I can imagine that goes both ways where gushing about video games is probably going to annoy/bore some people.
Yeah, but that’s not healthy for us. Getting hurt by others isn’t healthy for us either, but I think hiding is ultimately more harmful.
At least that’s what therapy tells me.
You are probably correct anyway, but it is a habbit that is difficult to break.