I cannot wait until the nursing home lan parties. During pandemic I have rekindled relationships with 2-3 friends, some out of state, and we've played games at least 2x a week. The opportunity for casual interaction (via discord) while focusing on another task (the challenging game), perfectly mimics the environment to build deep longlasting relationships through shared struggle, trust building, communication, feedback, and so on.
>I cannot wait until the nursing home lan parties.
I've seen this sentiment a lot on the internet, but after having visited many nursing homes, I don't think it will ever happen. Maybe nursing homes are different in the US, maybe I've seen the wrong kind of nursing home.
I would guess nursing homes haven't developed LAN parties because the people who grew up doing LAN parties are currently in their 30s and 40s. Not quite nursing home age yet.
I'm not sure if you're from outside North America, but I don't think nursing homes here are likely to have LAN parties unless we make some big medical breathroughs in the next few decades.
According to this survey of Canadian nursing homes, around 87% of residents suffer from some kind of cognitive impairment such as dementia, alzheimer's, or stroke related trauma [1].
Even assuming that you still have any friends around by the time your in a nursing home, the odds that neither of you suffer from cognitive impairment is about 1.7% (someone let me know if that math is wrong).
> According to this survey of Canadian nursing homes, around 87% of residents suffer from some kind of cognitive impairment such as dementia, alzhymer's, or stroke related trauma [1].
That sounded extraordinarily high to me, and I think because of the subtle difference in implication (not that what you said isn't correct) between your 'such as', and [1]'s 'including'.
In the table below, by far the highest 'characteristic' (82%) is 'Dependence in ADLs (Activities of Daily Living Hierarchy Scale ≥3)'. 'Dependence in Activities of Daily Living' is basically a description of why anyone would be in assisted living in the first place.
But also, there's 'cognitive impairment', and there's cognitive impairment, as it were. I don't think if you populated a table with 'reasons residents aren't gaming' that 'dementia et al.' would be high on the list, and the games those that were played wouldn't be shooters & GTA so much as puzzlers and adventure type games. At least, my grandfather enjoyed Spyro, Zelda, Animal Farm, that sort of thing.
I may be misreading that, but isn't the table saying that 82% of residents with dementia require assitance in their daily living activities?
From having spent time volunteering at a nursing home, that 87% number is not far off from my experience. I'd add that they tended to put volunteers with people who had less severe forms of cognitive impairment.
That being said, you would occasionally meet people who seemed mentally impervious to aging, I had the pleasure to speak with an 87 year old computer programmer who was still actively using all kinds of technology. He talked to me about punch card programming accounting systems on IBM 1401's and dealing with technology skeptical secretaries who would double check every computer calculation by hand.
I had this experience as well. Two friends of mine and I hop on Discord and watch a few episodes of a show or a movie once or twice a week. It's been fantastic, especially earlier in the pandemic when I was in a distant city.
