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!
There’s no cut off. Some people are just judgy (and often hypocritical).
I’m the same age as you and I’ve been gaming my whole life. My father had all the Ataris, (2600, 400, 800, XT, etc…). He and I built my first 386 together. My uncles had the Intellivision. Cousins with the ColecoVision. My father’s almost 70 and he’s still an avid Destiny 2 player.
I will admit tho, it’s harder to find women, our age, who are either into or at least open to gaming as an adult hobby. I’m not saying they don’t exist but having been divorced and remarried I can say there’s a gender gap there. I was lucky enough to find someone open minded. She never complained about my weekly game nights to keep in touch with my friends and she’s even opened up over the last few years and has become a bit of a gamer herself.
So… there is no cut off. It’s not immature or childish, and it’s certainly more of an art form than 3/4 of the garbage those same people will spend their free time on (reality tv, tiktock, endlessly scrolling the void of facebook).
It boggles the mind that the people being most judgemental about gaming are the self same people who sit for hours every night watching garbage shows on Netflix, and they see 0 comparison between that and gaming for hours.
I mean, I like doing both lol, but I actually think gaming is more productive as you’re at least either engaging in something social, a good narrative, or just fucking having a good time, whereas watching things is more passive (and completely okay to do as well).
Or better yet, Netflix in the background while they doomscroll tiktok every night.