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!

  • liminalDeluge@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    My parents are in their 50s and do not view video games as an unusual hobby. My father regularly plays games with his friends (aged 30s to 50s) on Friday nights and the weekend.

    The only person I’ve met who viewed video games like what you describe was a mid-60s gentleman who struggled to believe that I played video games regularly and had a good GPA in college. His hobbies were golf and walking, though, so he wasn’t about to call anyone else’s hobby “boring.”

    There is no age or demographic for whom video games are an unacceptable pastime. There are merely individuals who have their own weird hangups regarding the hobbies of others.

    Edit: wanted to add that I love to hear of parents gaming together with their kids! Some of my favorite childhood memories are playing games with my family and we still sometimes get together to play a co-op game.