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Comment by alexchantavy | Hacker News Reader

There's also probably going to be a huge market in making games that older people can play when this generation hits retirement age.

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I'm bumping up against retirement age, and I'll still kick your ass at Titanfall (well, maybe; the odds are good, but not assured). Call of Duty, meh, not so much.

I foresee a time where playing some twitch games aren't going to work for me anymore. But anything with the slightest hint of tactical gameplay and this oldster-in-the-making will be fine, I think. Especially the Tom Clancy games where "run and gun" just gets you killed more quickly. I look forward to Rainbow Six: Palm Springs with the Naples DLC expansion pack.

My dad just turned 65 and he still has no interest in video games except for solitaire. But I really think that he'd enjoy video games, especially as a way to keep an active mental life in retirement. I tried to explain the "it's almost-real physics!" angle of Kerbal Space Program, but that wasn't persuasive. Any tips?

Also, have you played Overwatch or TF2? I found both of those more interesting than Titanfall-- and a wise player can really help a team by jumping into the role that isn't present on a team.

"Hero" type games don't interest me much, and though Team Fortress interests me, just never made time for it. But, yeah, I've always been the one to sit on the flag with a rocket launcher, throw my warm body at a territory when no one else will (K/D, phfffftt). Don't see why that won't still serve me well in my old age.

Agreed at ignoring K/D :D

Hmmm. So I don't think of Overwatch as a "Hero" type game (although I'm not sure what you mean by that). I think Overwatch classes map to TF2 classes pretty straightforwardly. And there's no leveling or grinding for functional items, so it is maybe even a better than TF2 in that regard?

Oh, perhaps I misread about Overwatch. Or getting confused in my old age. :-) Not that I'd have time to play it, what with Titanfall still being entertaining, have barely played Battlefield 1, and a new Ghost Recon comes out on the 7th. I look forward to retirement so I can have more time to play!

EDIT: And I missed the part earlier where you asked for tips with your father. Ya know, I gave it some thought, and I don't know that I have any. Your dad is about ten years older than I am, which means he was just a tad past the proper age when the Atari 2600 came out. Me, I grew up with the Sears pong console, then came the day when we got a 2600. I was ten or twelve, just the right age to get hooked. So to me it's "umm, sure, I'm in my fifties and spend way too time playing video games. Your point?" whereas your father might have been just old enough to complain about those "kids and their video games", I don't know. So both he and I have had about fifty years to fall on one side or the other, and neither one of us has probably changed all that much since.

You and I both wonder, "why wouldn't you think Kerbal is cool? Hell, if I were retired, it's all I'd do if I didn't have any discipline." because we're already over the hump of playing to begin with, whereas he hasn't gotten past the barrier of "video games==the devil's tool". Dunno, just spitballing, and unfortunately don't have any potential pearls of wisdom. IOW, I don't get it any more than you do.

Overwatch may interest you because it's tuned pretty hard to reward team gameplay instead of just "who gets the most kills" and K/D isn't even something reported in the game stats. One of the characters (Reinhardt) is even designed around essentially being a damage sponge for teammates, with killing enemies being a distant third priority after shielding allies and keeping enemies out of short range with his big hammer.

It's also got a lot more variety in characters than most similar games, with the cast covering a variety of ethnicities, cultural origins, and ages ranging from 18 or 19 to 60+.

Overwatch is an EXTREMELY polished version of TF2. There is really nothing at its level at this point. I play both Titanfall 2 and Overwatch now. Titanfall 2 is a great, super fast team action shooter. Overwatch is completely focused on balanced team combat, each player has a unique character, with unique abilities to counter other character abilities. No two players can have the same character on one team, and the "scoring" is quite unique. KD is really not taken into account, and in fact, you can't even see that ratio at any point during the game, except for your own number of kills, and deaths. Points are awarded at the end for a wide variety of things, and ALL players vote the top 4 players, based on these types of achievements. It's pretty awesome.

Thanks, all. It's obvious I've confused Overwatch with something else. Given the backlog I've currently got, I'll wait until the "Game of the Year" discount and give it a whirl.

It was just $20 on the korean battlenet(global key) :) That's where I picked it up while I was on the fence!

The Civ games sound perfect for him!

The aging of the gaming populace is I think a large part of why online CCGs (like Hearthstone, Shadowverse, Eternal) have been getting so popular - while there are obviously a lot of kids who play, many of the players are older.

As I've gotten older I've lost the wherewithal to focus on mechanically difficult games like SC2.

Starcraft in particular always felt like work to me; the insane level of management required to simultaneously macro/micro...

I never enjoyed it.

Currently enjoying the apocalyptic wasteland / occasionally broken mess that is H1Z1: King of the Kill

I don't see any reason why retirement-age me won't be able to play Super Mario 2060. Adjustable difficulty, whether through mechanical tweaks or competitive multiplayer matchmaking should be good enough?

Mario already offers invincibility and constant flying items you can take if you die a lot in the recent games, so you should be all set to play Mario 2060 :).

I play World of Tanks with my friends, and we're all in our 40's. It's basically an FPS for people with slower reaction times.

Simulators seem to be popular for this. Someone to be buying all those expensive train sim addons..

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