How old is too old?

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Yeti Spaghetti

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Questions: If you had to guess, what percentage of gamers are over 40? 50? 60?

Are there any in their 70s?

At what age do you think you'll stop? At what age do you think you should stop?
 
Well the percentage of older gamers appears to be dropping fairly rapidly by the looks of how D&D is doing amongst younger people. I’d say 50% of gamers are over 30.

So it was more than 50% prior to recent years? That actually surprises me. I assumed that prior to the recent resurgence of gaming it was still largely a young thing, and that it's mostly older folks (30+) who have been getting back into gaming.
 
So it was more than 50% prior to recent years? That actually surprises me. I assumed that prior to the recent resurgence of gaming it was still largely a young thing, and that it's mostly older folks (30+) who have been getting back into gaming.

Well, I think there was a resurgence of gamers over 30 in 2000, when 3e was released. I think the shift after 4e went younger and with 5e even moreso.
 
If Gary Gygax were alive today, he'd be 83. One presumes he was still playing games at least until the last year of his life. Was nobody in his early games, in the early 1970s, even a couple of years older than him?

For entertainment media, an unusually large portion of RPG consumers are also professional content creators on some level. Surely, some of them will retire at some point before they die-- if for no other reason than not wanting to die with work left unfinished-- but do you think someone who played games for years, and made their career in them for decades, is going to stop playing after they "retire"?

I certainly have no intention of ever doing so. I wouldn't want to die at the table, but when my time comes, I hope it doesn't come so slowly that a month or two passes between the last time I roll the dice with my living friends and the first time I roll dice with the ones who beat me home.
 
And yeah, I'm forty. Current gaming group is a man ten years older-- my best friend-- a married couple my age, and a couple of girls in their early thirties, one of which is my girlfriend.

Previous group was a man 5-6 years older than me, his wife 5-6 years younger than me, my daughter's mother (my age) and her step-grandson who was 15 or 16 at the time.

Group before that was another dude, a few years older than me, the youth group he-- what, taught?-- at his church (so five or six teenagers), and the woman who became my girlfriend.
 
At 58 I'm not the oldest gamer I play with (oldest is I think 63). I don't plan on stopping until I am too disabled to play with reasonable accommodations. Considering visuals are important to me, total loss of sight might stop me. Total loss of hearing might mean having to find a group that is ASL proficient, partial loss of hearing might mean computer enhancements to make it easier for me to hear, if they don't exist now, there will certainly be Bluetooth hearing aids at some point.

I've got to imagine there are active gamers in their 70s and 80s. Today's folks in their 90s and up may have been too old to get into gaming in a serious way, but if I had room, and my game appealed to a 90 year old, they would be absolutely welcome.

I don't think there should be any reason, including age, that someone should stop. I do think that if one has sight or hearing disabilities they might have a hard time finding a group.

I guess cognitive disability might prevent someone from playing, though I bet somehow it will come out that RPGs are good things for those in at least the early stages of cognitive decline, especially if the game compensates for particular memory issues.
 
Hey, you know what would be fun? Pass the hat for some sexy gaming-related prizes, and have people vie to be proven the world's oldest RPG player. Wouldn't be real scientific because it relies on self-reporting and an incentive scheme, but it also doesn't have to be real scientific because it's not real important.

How old are they, what's the last game they played, what's the first game they played, what's their favorite game... and how old they were when they started.

I mean, I'm sure some old duffs in retirement homes aren't going to hear about it, and someone's gonna use their sweet old granny's blue hair to say she's cosplaying a water genasi, but fuck it-- the oral history would be worth the price of admission.
 
Also, if I get the money Social Security owes me... I'm going to buy those Japanese D&D boxed sets and if someone buries me with them, I'll come back and wreak havoc on the mortal plane.
 
Most of my gaming group is 50+. No one I know wants to stop. If anything it's more fun for us than twitchy PC games or PC games with large grind elements. As hobbies go it's social, cheap and requires little physical ability. Even sight is pretty easy to overcome. Last night I played half our VTT game via discord audio only because my internet was being flakey.
It's not like golf or tennis where my back can have issues and then the hobby is done.
 
Also, if I get the money Social Security owes me... I'm going to buy those Japanese D&D boxed sets and if someone buries me with them, I'll come back and wreak havoc on the mortal plane.
You know, canny gamers would club in on some connected [graveyard] plots and get a whole army of the dead thing happening.
 
At 58 I'm not the oldest gamer I play with (oldest is I think 63). I don't plan on stopping until I am too disabled to play with reasonable accommodations. Considering visuals are important to me, total loss of sight might stop me. Total loss of hearing might mean having to find a group that is ASL proficient, partial loss of hearing might mean computer enhancements to make it easier for me to hear, if they don't exist now, there will certainly be Bluetooth hearing aids at some point.

I've got to imagine there are active gamers in their 70s and 80s. Today's folks in their 90s and up may have been too old to get into gaming in a serious way, but if I had room, and my game appealed to a 90 year old, they would be absolutely welcome.

I don't think there should be any reason, including age, that someone should stop. I do think that if one has sight or hearing disabilities they might have a hard time finding a group.

I guess cognitive disability might prevent someone from playing, though I bet somehow it will come out that RPGs are good things for those in at least the early stages of cognitive decline, especially if the game compensates for particular memory issues.
 
On the topic of death and gaming I'm planning to wire the house with explosives and accelerant. Have an open casket funeral at my house and burn everyone and everything with me in true viking king tradition.

None of you are invited by the way...
 
Hmm, according to Wikipedia, Lee Gold (Land of the Rising Sun) was born in 1942, so that makes her 79...
If we want to push things back to Little Wars we get to 1913. I generally peg that as the start of modern wargaming as we know it today, based on no particular evidence, I'll admit.
 
If we want to push things back to Little Wars we get to 1913. I generally peg that as the start of modern wargaming as we know it today, based on no particular evidence, I'll admit.
Yea, but HG Wells isn't alive and gaming. I was pointing out how old Lee Gold who is clearly still an active gamer was.
 
I was just pushing back the dial a little, not fronting for an undead HG Wells to top the list. :grin:
But we're talking about age people might still game at. When gaming started is a separate thing.
 
But we're talking about age people might still game at. When gaming started is a separate thing.
It just allows someone to have started earlier that's all. Broadens the search pool a little. I don't get why you're taking this so seriously...
 
It just allows someone to have started earlier that's all. Broadens the search pool a little. I don't get why you're taking this so seriously...
OK sure, it just confused me as a response to my pointing out Lee Gold... I'm not sure it's necessarily relevant considering we're talking about how old one might be and still gaming. It doesn't matter when the game(s) you play were published. A gamer who is 90 today may only play games written in the past 5 years, or they may only play OD&D.

It is possible that the oldest gamer today is a war gamer and not an RPG gamer. Of course the question is what kind of gamer are we talking about? If gaming as in plays any kind of game at all, the gambling or card games set may have us (RPG players) beat...
 
Questions: If you had to guess, what percentage of gamers are over 40? 50? 60?

Are there any in their 70s?

At what age do you think you'll stop? At what age do you think you should stop?
I think the magic 8 ball is cloudy. We haven't hit those who came of age in the late 70s and 80s and got into the hobby during it's first peak.
 
I think the magic 8 ball is cloudy. We haven't hit those who came of age in the late 70s and 80s and got into the hobby during it's first peak.

I was thinking that too, that Gen-Xers who were essentially the first audience are just pushing 60 right now at the oldest end. So, only another 10-20 years will really tell, I suppose.

Personally, I have no idea where I'll be in a few years. After not having played for 30 years, I don't know if this is a short-term revival for me or a long-awaited return to high school nerdom. Things start breaking down after 40, and I'm 46, so I don't know how much longer I can put up with it. But maybe gaming is a way for me to put up with being over 40 and starting the break down. Don't know.

All I keep telling myself is that if I make it to 50, I won't give a crap about anything anyway, so I guess I can just go on gaming. Seriously, look at pictures of people in their 40s, and then in their 50s. Everyone is forcing a smile in their 40s, everyone is beaming and couldn't give a shit anymore in their 50s cause they survived their 40s.
 
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If we want to push things back to Little Wars we get to 1913. I generally peg that as the start of modern wargaming as we know it today, based on no particular evidence, I'll admit.

The video is well after HG Wells, but I think this video of Peter Cushing preparing figures for wargaming gives a good sense of how far back this goes (and he is playing Little Wars):
 
46 going on 15 here . . . No, I don't plan to stop (now if people I play games with try to stop me, that's an entirely different matter . . . and no I'm not trying to kill your precious little snowflake PCs! You chose to play BRP!)
 
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So it was more than 50% prior to recent years? That actually surprises me. I assumed that prior to the recent resurgence of gaming it was still largely a young thing, and that it's mostly older folks (30+) who have been getting back into gaming.
According to WotC:
- 40% are 25 or under
- 49% are between 25-40
- 11% are 40 or over


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ENWorld posted the following stats:

AgeNumbersPercentage
18-24592,401 users24.58%
25-341,309,373 users54.33%
35-44330,755 users13.46%
45-54138,372 users5.74%
55-6426,689 users1.11%
65+12,631 users0.52%

 
My guess for over/under 30 at 50% looks about right then. These younger gamers are probably a majority of the users at r/rpg over at Reddit (and other places).
 
Are there any stats on when younger folks came into the hobby? I wonder what percentage under 30 began gaming in the last 5 years or less, versus what percentage over 30 returned to the hobby in the last 5 years.
 
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