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 a similar age and also a gamer. For me it feels generational more than age. Gen X always seemed to see video games as a kids activity, even when they were in their 20s. While millennials see it as just another pastime, like tv and movies.
A 40-year-old in 2023 is a millennial.
Exactly this. Games barely entered mainstream in the 80s, and marketed to kids. Most people who grew up at that time saw mostly kids playing video games, and got used to thinking it’s a “kid thing” that people should really stop at age 20 and get a real hobby like fishing or day drinking.
Turns out: Kids who grew up in the 90’s, saw 20 year olds play games and becase more flexible. 00’s kids even more.
I’m 44. I had a rather annoying time in the dating pool with women self-selecting out due to hanging on to these old assumptions, and at some point decided to “fuck it - I’m going to work on being happy alone”. Changed after a while when I met my current wife. We game together.