Gaming

I'll be 59 this year and have been gaming since Pong. They'll pry my controller from my cold, dead fingers. Also, I'm a woman as is the circle I play with, who are also all older women (45+). We do exist and couldn't give a fuck about what society thinks about it.

Better gaming than just being a potato watching TV every spare minute with no other outlet.

Gaming's been shown to help prevent dementia because it keeps the brain active.

Consider that the women that you've been trying to date that don't appreciate gaming just aren't the right partner for you.

I feel like the socially acceptable cutoff is around your first corporate job where I live. After that people will say you are a geek

My relatives were asking me if I wasn't "grown up enough" to stop playing video games when I was 18.

It is not an age issue as much as it is just them associating something they dont get / understand with being childish since only children "play games".

No plans to ever stop gaming. Started at 7, now 48.

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.

I'm 51. I have house, wife, two kids and I run my own company. I could never, ever think about stop gaming. I've been doing this since the 80s. It's my hobby and my way to socialize and wind-down. It is my go-to when I need to get my mind off things. I'd be a literal wreck without it. I'm not ashamed of it and I will talk about it with anyone curious. Just like they might talk about sailing boats or golf trips. No difference.

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"

That is a really shitty and demeaning way to speak to someone. What the actual fuck? Very rude.
Have you ever tried to tell them that insulting someones hobbies isn't the best way to go about meeting people?

I’m 34 and can’t say I’ve ever had this problem. All the people I’ve gone out with just see it as a hobby I have and nothing else. I think the may problem is when people assume you don’t have any other hobbies or don’t do anything else because you like video games. I find that as I get older I’m gravitating towards vastly different hobbies so when the topic of video games comes up their reaction is usually what you describe: “Ah my kids love them!” then we move on to the next topic. That has never been a deal breaker though, which I assume is what you’re somewhat implying in your post.

I'm 48. I was dating five years ago, and now I'm married to a woman who doesn't play games at all. So I'll say this: when a date says "oh dear" or some such when you say you play games, that's a red flag. Even if they don't personally play, it's pretty shitty for a partner (or potential partner) to try to make you feel bad about about your hobbies. Absolutely fuck that noise. They don't have to like the same things, but it's a whole other situation for them to tell you it's dumb or wrong for you to like what you like. That goes double when you have kids and you play with them.

I play games, I draw, and I play D&D. Hell, I just bought a Steamdeck and am goingto build an arcade cabinet with my stepson. My wife does none of that, and it's super important to me that I not be shamed about my hobbies. I would never shame her about hers.

There is no age cutoff. The idea that fun things are childish is a stupid concept pushed by boring people on the rest of us because they don't know how to have fun anymore.

From my parents, my wife, and her parents I definitely got a, "Oh you still play games, like you're a kid. That's cute." vibe. But they we're pretty accepting once they realized it wasn't some hold over phase from being a teenager and a legitimate hobby with a community that increases technical knowledge, too.

That being said I still feel like a kid in one respect. You know that meme, where you're playing an online game and your mom comes in and says "Pause it and come to dinner." I get similar comments from my wife. And she'll get annoyed sometimes. Like, "I needed you help on something but I guess your game is more important." But I just sunk 45 mins of effort into a match of CS:GO, my rank is on the line which I've spent a lot more time on, it's actually pretty rude to ask me to drop that because you want the trash out. Not to mention I'm tanking my teammates ranks. Like if my hobby was soccer, you wouldn't walk out onto the pitch during a game holding everyone up and expect me to have a conversation about repainting the bathroom. But because they can't see the game, they don't get it.

So in that respect it can be difficult as an adult. You do have more responsibilities and relationships you need to maintain. So you need to be clear about setting aside time for your hobby. Communicate well with those in your life about it and what you need from them.

Depending on the person, it's not acceptable at any age. However, why would you want to be with someone so judgmental? It's easy to be accepting of hobbies other than your own if you're a decent person. After all, it's not like you would have all of your hobbies in common with your significant other, right?

No cutoff. I'm also in my 40s. When we get put in the retirement homes, we're going to have huge LAN parties again.

37 year old gamer here, time to start dating 20-somethings 😉

I'm 56 and play Minecraft and PUBG mobile.

As long as you're having fun I don't see why it should have an age limit.

Unless you're playing specifically children's games.

Posts like this remind me of the Twilight Zone episode Time Enough At Last, in which a man who loves to read gets knocked out and wakes up after the world has been devastated by hydrogen bombs. The entire episode leading up to this had most of the characters chastising the protagonist for being a "reader," who spends all of his time reading "doggerel" such as, wait for it, David Copperfield. Perhaps this was a genuine attitude held, if perhaps not as extremely, by people in the early or middle parts of the 20th century before television was truly ubiquitous, who looked at reading as frivolous or immature entertainment. But my point is that you're facing a cultural attitude that will probably shift more and more in favor of inclusiveness as time goes on. Almost all women in their 30s that I know either play video games themselves or just uncritically accept that other people play video games for fun. I can see why women in their 40s might be less amenable to it. I don't have anything to add other than that you're both ahead of the curve and a victim of the times.

So our discord regularly has friends and family in the age range from 17-59 currently who all game and socialise together. I don't think there is a limit.

I don't think there's one. Still, I find it a bit funny thinking of myself and my partner sitting next to each other, each on our own gaming PC, once we're old (or should I say older, yikes the 90s really were almost 30 years ago...)

I'm 45. I love gaming.

I like how Jack Black (age 53) puts it https://youtu.be/GNJtPFXUnm4

I am middle-aged. I play every weekend with my uncle who is in his 50s/60s.

My kids, who are single-digit in age, play things.

Times have changed, its not the 1980s/1990s where we have computer-illiterate parents. We all grew up playing games!

IMO, physical ability to do so should be the only cutoff. No one should have to stop doing something they love just because society deems them too old.

Interesting question! For me it feels like both a social group and age-based thing. I know of a couple co-workers in their 30s / mid 40s who play video games and we’ll chat about games very occasionally. My ex’s friends were all mid-twenties folks and gaming was one of their multiple hobbies.

But in general, I wouldn’t bring video games up with the majority of my other co-workers, and certainly not during small talk with more-or-less strangers (chiropractor, barbers, etc), whereas every other hobby I’d be cool talking to strangers about. I think I’ve been socialized to feel like gaming is “immature” and only to be talked about with other people “in the know” so I don’t feel judged for enjoying it.

In reality there is no age. It is a hobby as any other and don't let people judge you for enjoying it. They can not partake in the hobby all they want but they don't get to judge you for doing so.

Honestly I feel like anyone who doesn't play video games in 2023 is out of touch but that might just be my internet native speaking

My dad told me repeatedly while I was growing up that I would "outgrow" video games. There were several times where I thought that this had come to pass. But time and time again I have found myself going back to video games. I'm now turning 29 and I still love playing video games.

I'm 50. I just don't talk about it unless I secretly find out that my friends game. Acually a lot of them do. But, yeah, I don't talk to girls about it. Though sometimes you might find one that's into it.

I think it's a position that often comes from ignorance. Usually these people have no concept that games can involve high quality character and plot writing like Mass Effect, or teamwork focused gaming situations like MMO raids. They either never had any exposure to games or decided early on (usually in adolescence) that games weren't for them.

Ironically there's often a lot of overlap between game haters and people who spend more hours in front of the TV than most of us do gaming.

41 year old woman here. I was born with gaming, I will die with gaming. Do not hide your gaming from the get go. Put it in your profile. Its a huge part of my life, so finding that in a partner is a must in my book. There are women out there that share my sentiment, and some that just like games or don't care.

Never too old and if anyone says it is just ignore them, not their life to dictate. I will never understand why anyone would give up what they find fun because someone else finds it silly or 'not socially acceptable'. Its just them trying to press their own opinions of whats acceptable like its a fact.

I'll never stop gaming, if someone didn't like that to the point they judge me or try and tell me to stop its not a person I'd care to be friends with or talk to anyways. I'm not that old but when I was younger I got berated all the time for gaming, very glad I ignored all that nonsense and kept doing what I enjoyed. I've got a good career path out of it and friends I met online through gaming who now live close by.

I'm about your age (48) and game. I don't think there's a cut-off date as such, but it's a little bit of several things.

There is certainly a generational angle. When we were growing up in the 80s and early 90s, playing computer games was definitely not an activity targeted at adults, and gamers were generally seen as geeks and nerds. This changed of course, but other people who grew up at the same time as us but never got into games may still hang onto that image.

Gender also plays a role, women our age are a lot less likely to have ever been into games. My girlfriend for example has no problems with it but she never gamed herself and doesn't really understand it. If I think of female friends and acquaintances, I know only one woman who games as well, but she's already 8 years younger.

There's also the fact that many men do in fact grow out of gaming as they get older, start to have more responsibilities and less free time and when other interests and hobbies start to compete for that limited free time. I notice that in myself too, it's a lot less important to me now than it was 25 years ago.

Then there's the slightly uncomfortable fact that many women simply find it unattractive when a man lists gaming as a hobby, and see it as a red flag, perhaps because they associate it with certain stereotypes of people who are obsessive about it and whose whole personality revolves around gaming, perhaps because they have previous bad experiences with it, or perhaps because it's something they simply can't relate with. Maybe gamers are to women what "horse girls" are to men? :)

I think the best way to handle it on the dating scene is to show that you're a functioning adult with a well rounded personality and a variety of interests, who just happens to game as well. At the end of the day, you have to have enough common ground to start a relationship with someone.

Don't know what to say that hasn't already been covered in five pages of comments, but don't date people who denigrate your hobbies. There's no "age cutoff" for enjoying the things you enjoy. You don't just stop enjoying things after a certain arbitrary age threshold.

The old view of adulthood as being a time of constant misery, struggle, and hardship, in which every moment of enjoyment you manage to claw from it is a moment stolen from the future, which will be replaced by further misery, is fucking stupid. Do what makes you happy, and ditch the Karens.

That's an actually very interesting question, I've never thought of that.
I'm a gay guy and I'll be 33 next week and most of the time I'm talking to a new guy and I say I love games either they like games too or they just don't have something to comment about it... It's just something. But to be fair, I don't meet new people frequently so my experience is kinda limited and I don't know other guys that are older than me.
And I don't think I would really care if someone doesn't like that I'm old and still gaming. People read, watch movies, play cards for ages, gaming is a hobby as much as any other.
A person that thinks being old and gaming isn't fine is just a person I wouldn't connect to...

If anything, playing games keeps your mind into complex entertainment which should keep the brain young. Sure beats just mindlessly watching TV all day though just make sure you still touch grass every once in awhile.

Fuck em man, you do you.

I always thought I’d stop at 40. 3 months out from that, cant see myself slowing down anytime soon. 😎

Folks born in the 70s may have more feelings about video games being kid stoys than younger ones, but they probably also have really backwards ideas about, I don't know, fun in general? And that's probably signalling that there's some kind of fundamental personality mismatch or some unwelcomed views on masculinity and gender dynamics.

It might be a little harder to meet people, but it's worth sorting through the mismatches in order to find a compatible partner, even if it gets discouraging sometimes.

For what it's worth, I'm 40, and I not only still play video games, I still play the video games I loved when I was 5, and watch the cartoons that I loved when I was 10. My wife's not big into video games, but she definitely doesn't judge people for their preferred forms of entertainment.

My wife and I met 8 years ago playing Dota 2. Now our friend group is all late 20s early 30s, and we mostly play pve games like Darktide a couple times a week, but when we can we also meet up for tabletops. We will definitely continue playing games since we enjoy them. My in-laws just retired and they have gotten really into pokemon go. My mom never really 'got' any game but now she's really into Lego and jigsaw puzzles. One of my friend's parents are also really into tabletops and will sometimes join us. It's super cool that you and your kids have a hobby that you share and bond over, and I hope to have that with my own child someday!

I don't think there "must" be an age cutoff where people are supposed to stop playing - instead, there's an age cutoff for where people didn't grow up with or have access to computers or gaming.

I was born right on the cusp of video games moving from niche nerd shit and becoming relatively mainstream. I can see that there's a clear gap between friends who game and friends who don't that nearly directly ties to whether or not they played games as a kid. A lot of the time for my generation, that's a socioeconomic division more than anything else. Computers were expensive as a kid, so most of my friends who grew up poor found other interests in childhood and grew up to be adults who don't really play games. The kids I grew up around whose families were more well-off have continued gaming as adults. Maybe less, maybe different games; but in many ways it's like asking what age someone is supposed to outgrow "having hobbies".

The older someone is today the less likely it is they had access to games and gaming, and often the more intimidating they find learning about computers and gaming - and the more time they've had to find some other hobby that they find compelling.

There definitely is a thing in the dating market where some people can be particularly judgmental about gaming. Personally, I've found that is loudest and largest for some of the more ... "serial" daters I know, who have found themselves in relationships with lots of different people and have found that gaming, or identifying as a "gamer" tends to correlate with other bigger issues. There's also the side concern when something that's big in your life isn't something they can relate to - a little like the ultra-fan Sports Dudes where all of every game day will always be booked off for watching the games with the boys.

I think in regards to the dating market, it's less that anyone needs to "grow out of" gaming, and more that adults are more expected to have a mature relationship with their hobbies, gaming included. And given that there are negative connotations about degenerate adult gamers not really grown up, that may be something to keep in mind regarding how you present that hobby and how you talk about your relationship with it.