

21st-Century Shooters Are No Country for Old Men - adamhowell
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/02/no-country-for-old-men

======
kqr2
Video games are also affecting real life sports. Modern football players who
have been weened on NFL Madden appear to be better at tactics and reading play
formations.

Also, there was an instance where a NFL player executed a move from the video
game.

 _But increasingly, according to Chris Suellentrop in this month’s Wired
Magazine, the trend has reversed. A generation of actual NFL players, raised
on games like Madden NFL, are bringing the influence of video games into their
real play._

<http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/02/05/04>

~~~
wmf
Let's just hope no soldiers attempt a rocket jump in the real world.

~~~
eru
When you can't respawn, it's horrible hard to learn the technique where you
get nearly no damage.

------
hy3lxs
This just underscores the importance of social networking within gaming,
especially for the older demographic. You want to play with your friends that
are online at the time, not with a bunch of strangers (who are younger,
better, and more immature). The recent revival of small-team coop is also
along these lines (l4d, borderlands).

------
DannoHung
Even as an older teenager the 11 year olds were just so fucking annoying. I
really wish Microsoft would allow for some sort of age, or at least maturity,
certification thing where I could say, "No, I do not want to play with 11-13
year old racists who think that Nigger is the best and funniest word in the
entire world."

~~~
dagobart
I'm with you. Unfortunately, that applies to the whole world.

------
10ren
As an older gamer, I found that general fitness has a huge impact on reflexes.
It's an ironic but effective motivation for making time for exercise.

There also seems to be a crying need for tiered online playing. Every other
sport has them, often A, B, C etc level teams, to solve the same problem that
it's not fun to be totally outclassed. The frustration level has to be
challenging but attainable.

~~~
teamonkey
The Xbox 360 uses TrueSkill for matchmaking. Not perfect but better than
nothing. I don't think the PS3 has anything similar.

<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trueskill/>

------
jerf
"Time to play" is a big factor, certainly. I've been playing Bayonetta lately,
a Devil May Cry-style fighter, and while I'm pretty sure I have the raw skills
to master the game, I sure don't have the _time_. (Or, if I had the time, the
desire. But I certainly don't have the time.) I'm not lost in the action on
the screen or incapable of understanding what I should do or what's going on,
I simply don't have the time to put that stuff in my cerebellum where it needs
to be to play at the highest level. For example, in the "Hard" mode, there are
sounds that when you hear them need to immediately trigger a particular button
press (dodge), ideally with a high degree of accuracy as well. I can do it
when I concentrate, but you need to be able to do it without concentrating
because there's other stuff to concentrate on, too.

But I also observe that these are also exactly the games you hear about the
younger folk being so dominating in, that is, the games you need to have the
time to download reflexes into the lower brain.

Oh, I don't deny that you get worse as you get older, nice and slow so as you
can pretend it's not happening, and in a hypothetical fair fight my 15-year-
old self could presumably beat my 30-year-old self in reaction-based gaming.
But I don't think that explains the utter domination, I think that explains
only a small part of the difference. The utter domination comes from having
the time to train reflexes.

Also, interesting counterpoint:
<http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1399> , the part in the first
blockquote.

The other thing I would observe is that the controllers I grew up on were
_terrible_. Everything pre-Nintendo was mushy and introduced what I now
consider readily-visible latency into the game control. In hindsight, the
Genesis controls were pretty mushy too, and even the Nintendo I call out was
noticably more mushy than the Super Nintendo controller, the oldest controller
I can still use today without cursing at the latency. This robbed my
generation of valuable years of high-feedback gaming. I've played some of
these old games in emulation in the past few years, and they are distinctly
easier than I remember them, and I think that's mostly because when I play
them in emulation I'm using modern controllers. (In particular, I played
Beamrider on the Atari 2600 with original controllers and on the GBA through
the Atari collection cartridge, and on my first try on the GBA I got further
in the game than I could back when I was 12 or so on the original controllers.
(If you think that doesn't jive with my age, you're right; it was old even by
then, but the device was still functional. Those 2600s were pretty robust.))

------
NathanKP
Part of the articles argument seems to be that growing up with fast paced
shooters gives younger players more of an advantage. I have to wonder, though,
if rewiring the brain for fast twitch reflexes through FPS games is actually
good for the young, developing mind later in life.

------
Alex63
Most of my on-line gaming has been console-based, so I can't compare to
current PC gaming. The issues covered in the article are very familiar to me.
Leaving aside the juvenile name-calling, the younger players do seem to have a
different approach to the games, and possibly an advantage. In the case of
MW2, GRAW, and other tactical shooters, it seems to me that the younger
players prefer the "run & gun" modes that favor fast motor reflexes. The older
players (including myself) gravitate toward the modes that favor better team
coordination and a more methodical approach (at the cost of having to listen
to complaints about "camping").

~~~
teamonkey
Players tend to fit within certain play styles. The most famous is the Bartle
study which has four categories: Killer, Achiever, Explorer, Socializer. Your
style of play falls into the Explorer category, which favours strategy. The
people who are really fast at killing are Killers, obviously.

If you want your target market to include all four types you must provide
something for all four types. The problem is that the Killer group is easiest
to provide for so it's very easy for it to dominate.

[http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2005/01/styles-of-
pla...](http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2005/01/styles-of-play-full-
chart.html)

I've submitted the link to HN so it has its own thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1111406>

------
tvon
In my experience, console gaming takes the social experience of online gaming
and turns it ass backwards. Instead of selecting servers from a list, which is
essentially like picking what community you want to play with, you are thrown
in with a bunch of anonymous strangers who in all likely hood are going to act
like juvenile asshats.

I believe there is a social theory that relates to this, and I think PG wrote
something on it, the whole "as groups get bigger they get less personal and
more people are asshats" thing. Well, online console gaming has short
circuited the process there...

Do you recall those stories about people who became life long friends or got
married after they met in Everquest or WoW? I don't expect you'll hear many
stories like that about xbox live or playstation online.

~~~
camccann
_I believe there is a social theory that relates to this, and I think PG wrote
something on it, the whole "as groups get bigger they get less personal and
more people are asshats" thing. Well, online console gaming has short
circuited the process there..._

Perhaps you're thinking of this... ah, theory? <http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/>

------
dasil003
I witnessed this with my younger brother. The last game I played seriously
online was Halo 2. I was 26 when it came out an my brother was 11. During the
first year I made level 30 on Live. My brother couldn't touch me until he
turned 15 and Halo 3 came out. He ended up playing it sooner and more and I
just never was able to catch up.

But I believe it's pretty much hours played that makes the difference seem so
large. The top pros are probably young because every bit of twitch reflex
makes the different at that level, but I think you can still play at quite a
high level when you're older (okay I'm only 31 now). PC games might be a good
place because having the resources to run a game at max resolution on a very
large monitor can make a big difference.

------
mhb
That's exactly how I felt when I played paintball a while ago.

~~~
ahlatimer
It depends on the environment. I was an avid paintball player for about 7
years, as was my dad, and he always managed to outclass a lot of the people on
the field. He wasn't the fastest guy with the ability to dump the most paint
on the field, but he was tactical and could cooperate well. After the first or
second game of the day, people were vying for him to be on their team, even if
they'd shrugged him off as some old fart before.

~~~
sliverstorm
I figure this is natural. I figure it would have been the same way in video
games, if it wasn't for:

1: twitch reflexes are important

2: the cost of practice is zero- no risk, no $$$- so kids with lots of time
can log massive playtime. Traditionally being older meant more experience, but
now because of the growth rate of games, a young kid has more experience with
modern fps's than an older player

3: there's no physical risk to the player. I feel this changes the landscape a
lot; in the real world, say in the army for example, the chance of death
changes everything.

------
johnl
Sounds like there is a new gaming market needing attention. Or maybe
handicapping players.

------
ryanwaggoner
I play games with friends or alone, never with strangers. Problem solved.

I have yet to play QuakeLive on anything other than practice mode.

~~~
gridspy
And now you have a new problem : Scheduling games when all your friends can
play.

------
DanielBMarkham
I'm 44 and used to be pretty hot on games -- like in the dark ages 15 or 20
years ago. But I gave them up a long time ago. They got simply too addictive
and time-consuming.

At Christmas my 14-year-old got me to play Halo 3 with him and his two
brothers, 24 and 21. Not only was he killing me with ease, he was mauling his
brothers easily as well. It got so bad that he would run up and stand still in
front of me just so I could shoot him and get a kill.

I mostly felt like one of those little plastic ducks in the shooting gallery.

Dang kids. Wish they'd get off my lawn. :)

------
malkia
And that's why I still play HOMM3 and Disciples 2... or any turn-based RPG for
that matter (mainly japanese ones).

------
krakensden
Play games on the PC, where voice chat is usually opt-in.

~~~
dkersten
And where the younger players like to use cheats and hacks...

Though personally, I'm still playing Modern Warfare 2 (since I never played
the previous ones, the "flaws" that PC gamers are complaining about don't
bother me) and even though I'#m told theres hacks and cheats out, I still seem
to be holding up well enough, so I hope before it begins to bother me, I'll
have got bored of the game.

And yeah, seems few people on the PC even bother with voice chat.

~~~
weaksauce
And that is why single player PC is more compelling to me. I could see left 4
dead being interesting to play with a few friends but us old guys don't have
the time anymore. Sigh.

~~~
dkersten
Yeah.. I agree. I generally prefer single player games too. I mean, I like the
idea of playing with other people - but those same other people also turn me
off because I can't enjoy the game environment, gameplay and experience
without someone else imposing what they feel it should be on me, even if thats
not how I want to play.

I play a few multiplayer games with friends sometimes and the experience is
much better because we can agree how we want to play.

Having said that, occasionally I do play multiplayer games with people and
have a lot of fun doing it - counter strike a few years ago, rainbow 6 vegas 2
last year and modern warfare 2 this year.

