

Today Show hosts think gamers over 30 are "weird" - seagaia
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/07/today_show_gamers_over_30_are_.php

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Alex3917
I think there is good reason to be skeptical of hardcore gamers who are above
a certain age. These games all use the same basic tricks to trigger to
pleasure mechanisms of the brain. As such, anyone who is sufficiently
intelligent should be able to figure out that they're all basically the same,
and thus to be avoided after a certain point if one wants to keep growing as a
person.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy playing genuinely novel games when they come
out like Katamari Damacy or Braid, but that's still not more than a few hours
a year. And I appreciate that gaming can have other ancillary social or
parenting benefits.

But at it's root most serious games today are designed to exploit the
mechanisms of addiction. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, it may
even be beneficial to a limited extent. But if you eventually want to make
your own art and contribute to the world in a meaningful way then this
requires becoming fully self-actualized. And this is very difficult when you
start spending several hours per day deriving pleasure from the baser parts of
the brain.

That being said I'm not a neuroscientist, but this is sort of the vague
feeling I get after reading some of the basic literature on both addiction and
extrinsic motivation.

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rhygar
I think there is good reason to be skeptical of hardcore sports fans who are
above a certain age. Sports all use the same basic tricks to trigger to
pleasure mechanisms of the brain. As such, anyone who is sufficiently
intelligent should be able to figure out that they're all basically the same,
and thus to be avoided after a certain point if one wants to keep growing as a
person.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy watching genuinely novel sports when they
come out like Foosball or Ultimate Frisbee, but that's still not more than a
few hours a year. And I appreciate that sports can have other ancillary social
or parenting benefits.

But at it's root most serious sports today are designed to exploit the
mechanisms of addiction. I don't think this is entirely a bad thing, it may
even be beneficial to a limited extent. But if you eventually want to make
your own art and contribute to the world in a meaningful way then this
requires becoming fully self-actualized. And this is very difficult when you
start spending several hours per day deriving pleasure from the baser parts of
the brain.

That being said I'm not a neuroscientist, but this is sort of the vague
feeling I get after reading some of the basic literature on both addiction and
extrinsic motivation.

~~~
esrauch
I think your comment is actually a convincing argument that we should be
skeptical of hardcore sports fans rather than a convincing argument that we
shouldn't be skeptical of hardcore gamers.

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Cyranix
I am a gamer, and I will be a gamer in a couple years when I'm over 30. But
one mistake that I've seen a lot of gamers make when getting riled up over
this issue of perception, including the author of the linked article, is
making a faulty jump in logic -- from "The average gamer is over 30 years old
[according to a variety of sources]" to "People over 30 years old are more
likely to be gamers than not". I have yet to see a credible source come out
and directly say this. Take a look at the ESA stats in the article comments
from Lea Hill -- they're given in a way that tries to imply it.

In this regard and many others, the rhetoric around social acceptance,
identity (including age, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief,
political belief, and ethnicity or nationality), and maturity is really
twisted. Most people are defending opinions instead of examining realities...
I've been a lot happier since I stopped following the discussion in any
serious way.

~~~
krschultz
I'd also like to see a median age rather than an average. It's one of those
times when one direction of the average has a limit (how young you can be and
still be a gamer) while the other side of the average (maximum age) is far
less limited. Lets say the average starting age for a gamer is 7, that means
they can only be 23 years younger than the 'average' game, while someone who
is 70 years old is 40 years older than the 'average' gamer. I bet the median
is lower than 30.

Not to mention if you time weight it. When I was 15 I spent a heck of a lot
more hours playing games than I do now. I'm probably still a 'gamer' because I
have Starcraft 2 installed on my PC, but I havent played it in 5 weeks. When
Starcraft 1 came out, I was lucky if I saw the sun in 5 weeks because I was
playing Starcraft.

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mechanical_fish
The headline refers to celebrities on the _Today_ show, not "people".

It is sometimes hard to wrap one's head around the fact that generational
change happens at the speed of... _generations_. One year per year, on
average. Tune in ten years from now, when the average age of gamers may well
be 47, yet gamers over 40 will be considered "weird" by people significantly
older than 40.

~~~
atomicdog
I think it's more of a "you should have kids/be spending all your time with
your kids in your thirties!" thing more than a "you shouldn't be playing games
in your thirties" thing. So if, ten years from now, the average age for
childbirth has not increased, we may still be seeing this kind of prejudice.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Good point. Time does march on, and human activity is not age-invariant,
especially after age 120.

This is also a better hypothesis because it has better explanatory power: The
_Today_ show is predominantly watched by people who are not scrambling to get
to work in the morning, and that group is going to contain a high percentage
of people with kids, and such people think like... people with kids.

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ilamont
I think many people in the Today show's late morning audience, were they to be
mapped to the technology adoption curve, would be classified as late
mainstream or even "laggards". Calling adult gamers "weird" plays into
preconceived or outdated notions of gaming that many of them have.

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seagaia
I for one think this kind of mindset is ridiculous, only led by stereotypes of
gamers and a general ignorance towards the video gaming community.

First of all, the question being posed is sexist, it only asks about "men over
30", which tells me there must be a stereotype about "girls not being able to
game" or something ridiculous.

Their laughs disgust me, and I'm a bit scared at how many people their
opinions influence per day.

~~~
stcredzero
_...this kind of mindset is ridiculous, only led by stereotypes of [] and a
general ignorance towards the [] community._

Fill in the blank and welcome to the mainstream US mindset, where Taco Bell
resembles Mexican food, Dick van Dyke can sound like someone from England, and
all folk dancers stick out their elbows and move like Popeye.

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haldean
For what it's worth, I think people who watch the Today Show are weird,
independent of age.

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systemtrigger
I bet they judge men who watch television more favorably.

~~~
bct
Anyone who thinks of "TV-watcher" as a significant part of their identity is a
bit weird, too.

~~~
Symmetry
The things we do that are considered weird by other have a way of forming part
of our identity, whether they otherwise would have or not. Nobody thinks its
weird to watch a lot of TV, so even those people who spend way too much time
watching TV consider themselves "TV-watchers".

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walru
“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” -John Lennon

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gamble
I believe the inflection point when video games became mainstream was the
release of the original Playstation in 1995. Prior to that point, at least in
my experience, video games were strictly a pass-time for nerds. The
Playstation was very successful at marketing video games to a wider, if not
older audience.

People who were in their early teens when they got their Playstation are just
now reaching their thirties. Anyone older than that is likely to have acquired
a contempt for video games before they became mainstream, and hasn't seen fit
to update their opinions in the intervening decades.

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kleiba
Who cares?

