Is there such a thing as being "too old for games"?

I'm 24, right now, and, my father keeps telling me, "Mo, you will grow too old for games."

Will I feel as passionate about PC games as a 60-year-old like I am now?

Will I feel as invested into building a gaming system as an old man like I am as a young whippersnapper?

Robin Williams was 63 when he died, and, he played games his whole life.

I love PC gaming and I hope I never grow too old for it. The question is, will PCs still be around at the end of my lifetime? Or will something, better or worse, replace it?
 
I don't know how you will feel as a 60-year-old guy. I am 53, and I am playing since PC's are on the market. As long as you have a *normal* ( what ever that is ;) ) life beside your gaming, why should it be wrong to spend some time infront of a monitor, having FUN. Oh, and maybe you should start living your own life. 24 years old/young, you better get out there and start your own history. ( Own house, family and friends, hobbies etc. )

Cheers
Andrew
 
no way Mohammed, my dad and I used to play gran turismo 3 for days and he's 36 years older than me, also most professional gamers are older than most gamers. I know a lot of people in their 30s and 40s who can't wait to get home and play at the end of the day.

Don't feel bad about it man, if you like it, do it your age doesn't matter
 
With 24 you should still be playing / racing games..... at your own place :)

Average age on RD is waaaay above 30 btw.
 
I like your profile pic Mohammed! Best dogs ever! And no, 24 is a good age to play games. I'm 23 and still love playing games... Maybe I should go outside sometime :O_o:
 
One of my sports takes me outside, the other is sim racing. Next month I turn 69 years old. I started racing on a PC in 1992 in a Compuserve "ladder" competition, have been racing online ever since and currently still drive almost daily and staff for the Race 07 forum. So that's about 22 years of simracing, maybe I've done it enough and should quit before I get to 24 years?

No Way!

To add, I began roadracing motorcycles when I was 24 years old and did that until I was almost 40.
When will your life begin?
 
One of the swedes I have driven rally and racing games with online is well within his seventies. I moved to my own place earlier this year, and I'm turning 27 in november. I had to make myself a man-cave for the PC and consoles, of course you can go on with games forever! :)
 
I think Video Games are unfairly seen as an immature thing. People continue watching football matches till they die, watching movies, doing sports etc... Why they can't play video games? It does not require less intellegence, less skills or less effort. I think in the next 20-30 years, video games will be a very natural part of the society.
 
I don't think you get too old for gaming, that doesn't mean to say there won't come a time when you feel more inclined to do something else or just lose interest but I think the vast majority of gaming releases these days are aimed at older audiences and certainly produced with real consideration given to being inclusive for all ages and genders for that matter.

It's increasingly common in RL situations to bump into people of any age/gender who game, and I don't see that trend changing any time soon. Since 2008 gaming revenue has outstripped film/cinema revenues in the UK and the gap widens year-on-year. While the rate of adoption in the current older generation might only continue to move at a steady pace, more and more of those of us who have grown up with games consoles, computers, mobile phones, and the internet are filling those age groups that used to be off-limits to the gaming industry.

The level of revenue generated by gaming as a whole and triple AAA releases these days just simply cannot be the result of an entertainment medium that only appeals to spotty teenagers locked away in their sweaty man-pits.

I'd say whoever you are gaming is a perfectly valid way of entertaining yourself. If your happy with it, go for it, age should never be a barrier to anything.
 
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I think Video Games are unfairly seen as an immature thing. People continue watching football matches till they die, watching movies, doing sports etc... Why they can't play video games? It does not require less intellegence, less skills or less effort. I think in the next 20-30 years, video games will be a very natural part of the society.

Agree with Omer, Video gaming only really kicked on back in the 80's most people have just grown up with it now. I'm about to turn a certain age soon and can't see me giving up yet. I loved arcades as a kid and my own sons now who are in there early 20's, have had consoles & PC's running flat out in the house since they could walk & talk. I really got into it that way when they would let me have some time with Gran Tran on the PS2 !
I think as grow older your tastes will change in gaming, like any hobby some people are just not into some it will be golf, fishing football ect and carry well into later life. I can see that using technology now will keep the mind sharp later in life, we've all seen older people using smart phones & chatting to their gran kids on Skype so why should gaming be any different.
 
I have been gaming since I was about 5 starting on a Commodore (37 years old now), then been on consoles until last year when I built my first PC (just had a laptop before). I did intend to just play racing sims on it but have ended up buying a fair few other types of games for it as well. I have other hobbies as well Cycling etc but gaming is just part of what I enjoy doing in my spare time.

I have had to retire from online FPS though, although i used to do pretty well on them, my cat like reflexes have started to desert me and I just get frustrated getting wupped.

It's a hobby like anything else, if you enjoy it and it does not take over your life I don't see the problem. Although when Reiza bring out new updates the life/hobby balance can get a bit messed up.

You would only end up filling that hole with another hobby or time filler so may as well enjoy it.
 
I've been playing games on computers since 1981 (ZX81), where the onboard memory was 1kb.

The only thing that's changed since, is that my current PC has 8 GB of memory, but my brain capacity has shrunk to 1kb ....... :O_o: :whistling:
 
I have been playing games since the moment i heard they exist. SP1, PC Pentium1 ? Etc.
We had PC gaming place in neighborhood, 1 euro 1 hour at the time. 5min away from my home. I didnt had SP1 nor PC. I used to spend quite some time and play even when my friends left for lunch and they would come back, on few occasions they would have found me still in the same place. I could never get tired of it.
However, i have played games since '99. And then i began with F1 Challenge 99-02 in fact.
Till today, i had few things for which i thought i would never get old. Toys were one example. I thought they would be around me forever, and there was time i couldnt find any satisfaction.
How the time is passing by i feel the same experience comes to me about the games. But thats not the case with sim-racing. I am involved more than i have ever been. But for anything else, nah, i dont have nerves to sit and waste time on some made up story etc. Only for online perhaps, it would be fun or worth. Otherwise, i have other worries.

I guess the fact i was into games since young age, now on 24, i still have my father entering the room, seeing me driving and saying "you are mad! you are racing with ghosts" but, yeah, he is like that, let say different. He wont understand it nor tries to, I have same age friends who are racing with their fathers. That's one of the reasons i hardly find time to race from home. He is 99% home in the only time i can drive and 110% the chances are that if i start some race he will interrupt me :) (reason why i rarely show on servers)

But too old ? Nope. I think this thing, sim racing, isnt about ages but passion. I know people racing from 7 to 77, so, it depends how you see on that.

And i have read what Andrew and Bram said, dont go there, the only way you could start your own life with house or decent job from where i come from, is either your father has big company, or you win bingo. About the job, you would need first to decide on which party youll be.
 

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