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!

  •  livendie   ( @livendie@beehaw.org ) 
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    211 months ago

    I used to love video-games when I was 10-18yo. It was fun. Growing up abit more(21yo), saw the magic die. Can relate to the ones that “don’t get it”. There opinion does matter. I’d rather read a book than play a video-game any day of the week.

    • I take it more as “their opinion doesn’t matter to me since I’m still having fun”. I definitely get the magic leaving though, as I don’t play as grind heavy games as I used to. I enjoy more story driven games now though. As long as you still get your stuff done and don’t let it become an obsession, gaming is a valid hobby