Are Modern Shooters Too Much for Older Gamers?

[hack__you]

agreed. i'm getting trash talked by my 9 year old kid

 

[2shea]

I'm 26, used to be a pretty hardcore gamer, Cs1.5, 1.6, UT99, css ut2k4, Cod4 and lots of other games. I notice that you can usually pick out the younger players

 

[mlopinto2k1]

This is one of the main reasons I stopped playing multi-player and specifically Counter-Strike. It's ridiculous. There is no "code of conduct" as you so elegantly called it. It is very depressing to listen to that kind of crap going on NON STOP. You wan't to know where it's REAAAAL bad?? www.stickam.com - Go check that out. Not a game, a video chat service. Kids just sit there ALLLLL DAAAAY LOOOONG. Can't wait for these people to have kids! It ought to be interesting!

 

[Guest]

I personally don't enable voicecoms and try and ignore the text. And it's not just the kids it's the teens and 20 somethings who are just as bad. I'm 44 for the record. Started on original Duke Nukem when it was new then migrated to Quake2 when the demo came out played that heaps especially ctf and these days just play css.
One aspect which is not covered in the story is the total lack of respect for fair play shown by younger people. They will use any form of exploitation of the game whether it be hacks, glitches or helping from the sidelines after they are killed. You do have to spend time keeping your hand eye up to scratch but I found that if you spend too much time with it you actually get worse. And I think that is why the fps games attract bad behaviour. Some people spend toooo....much time in them. If the games were deeper in gameplay perhaps it would be harder for full timers to get bored and be disruptive. But there really hasn't been anything grounbreaking for years now. And everybody feels comfortable with playing like only 2 or 3 maps out of the hundreds or thousands available. So I play little now.

 

[eyemaster]

While I manage to be at the middle of the pack or a bit bellow in CSS, I can't seem to have a better ratio than 1:3 Kill/Death in Moder Warfare 2. I had to mute incoming voice because of the childish insults being thrown in there. I get the frustration of not seing anything, being knifed in the back way too often. My eyes and reflexes must be going away. You barely have the time to see a pixel of the enemy and you're dead.

I still keep trying, hoping to get better at MW2.

I guess I just don't understand the games anymore!

 

[tenor77]

I used to be a deathmatch kinda guy. Now I'm less inclined to play vs, and more into co-op. Mainly cause I don't get much of a chance to see my friends like I used to so it's how we all get a chance to at least do something together.

As for skill, I couldn't say. I do know that I didn't leave from getting pwned. It's just that after work it doesn't sound appealing.

 

[obiown77]

I think this is very subjective, yes as people age some motor skills slow down, however, look at it this way, these kids will play fps over 6 hours a day giving the opportunity, the highly skilled ones can play alot more. The amount of practice they have is emence.

But if I look at myself for example, I'm 33 now, and yes I still play fps alot. atleast 2 - 3 hours a day ( weekends more ) sad i know , I still play as hard as ever, last year, I could claim and prove to be best sniper in combat arms, point being I kept up will all these kids. I think as long as your eyes are good, and you maintain your hand eye coordination you can infact keep getting better.

 

[micky_lund]

great article..even as a 16yr old, i hate the trash online...its annoying, especially when someone is hacking...swear all u like, but he isn't going to stop hacking

 

[necronic]

[citation][nom]zerapio[/nom]Really? I think that after Quake3 all other games seem slow. I do feel that as you grow up you have less time to practice (jobs, family, friends, etc). Lack of practice makes you sloppy like any other activity.[/citation]

Totally agree with this. If you were to put most of these MW2/Halo3/TF2/L4D players into an old fashioned Quake 3 rail arena you would see who had the better training tools. That is the absolute definition of 'twitch'.

Does anyone even make stuff like that anymore?

The realy turning point for me was when playing on the highest graphics setting became more important than your frames per second. Back in my day (chuckle) we all ran with some of the best machines out there, and turned all of our settings down to minimum to get the absolute best fps.

Oh yeah, and people thinking they can play competitively on a console remote? That's like a 'My Left Foot' version of 24 hour comic day. Freakin aim assist....

Anyways, I'll ditto a lot of the other older gamers here and say that I simply don't have the time or motivation to play 8 hours a day anymore. The time I do put into games anymore are far more cerebral ones like Civ, GalCiv, EvE, etc..

 

[justsomeone]

That's funny. I'm from Mobile, AL and come to think of it my knuckles do drag the ground. And I breath out of my mouth all the time as well.

Actually I'm an engineer, build my own computers, design machines using 3D CAD... etc, basically I'm a nerd. I probably am an exception however.

 

[Lewis57]

I agree with the time issue more than anything. I may not be that old (18) but my game time has less than quartered. I didn't even bother buying MW2 until last week because i just had no time to play. Damn coursework.

 

[maestintaolius]

[citation][nom]necronic[/nom]t....Anyways, I'll ditto a lot of the other older gamers here and say that I simply don't have the time or motivation to play 8 hours a day anymore. The time I do put into games anymore are far more cerebral ones like Civ, GalCiv, EvE, etc..[/citation]
That's because it's incredibly easy to suddenly lose 5 hours to Civ and not realize it. "I'll quit after I get gunpowder I'll quit after I finish this city I'll quit after I wipe out the Persians I'll quit after ... oh crap when did the sun come up? Hmm, maybe I should call in sick today I really want to finish wiping out the Germans."

 

[killerclick]

Is there a competitive element to gaming now? Since when does anybody have to 'keep up' with others when games are concerned?

 

[Guest]

Same as it ever was, assholes. As if you late-twenty-somethings and older were any different 10+ years ago. I am thinking specifically of Quake2 with the Weapons Factory mod, but is absolutely true in any of the online games I had played during all of the '90s and currently, when I say, "Wow, these sociopathic brats need a heavy beating by their parents." Obviously, their parents don't know what their children are really like or don't really give a shit.

Now that you are all grown up, you seem to have selective memory loss. You've rewritten your history so you can believe you were so well behaved. Or maybe you believe that what you said in an online game was just part of the experience. Well, go fuck yourselves, cowards.

 

[caustin582]

I couldn't disagree more. Maybe this is true for gamers who are considerably older (people who played games like Pac-Man in their teenage and young adult years), but it's the other way around for people who started gaming in the early to mid 90s. Games were a hell of a lot harder back then. Pretty much every genre, FPS included, has gotten considerably easier and more casual over the years. I'd like to see a Halo 3 "pro" try his hand at rocket jumping in Q3A or Quake Live. The mere absence of regenerating health would likely send the kid into a coma.

 

[TheDuke]

I believe its more about practice. I see some of my friends younger brothers and nephews playing hours of halo and call of duty. They just have the time to get better at these games.

 

[joneb]

Im 42 and I played games since ping pong like someone else said, moved on through various generations of computers until pcs came of age and i still play but Im tired of all the nastyness these days. I find alot of the fps games just get me wound up too much now and I dont think my reactions are just as good though Im also wary of various ways people can manipulate online play.

I play an mmorpg right now that I have enjoyed a lot especially as the one im on seems to be a bit more mature than the last one I played but I am geting to find them boring because content is too slow to update. I like experience and discovery and alot of grinding gets me bored. I would play more single player rpgs but I would miss the banter I get when I have a good party in my game. I would like there to be more co op multiplayer fps games rather than pvp centred.

I do love Fallout 3 though and that could be a good mmorpg world.

 

[Guest]

Better tools? I disagree. I was loath to see auto-regen and aim assist in the latest Wolfenstein installment, and I noticed similar features in other FPS games (such as MW) that are ported to consoles. I've also seen first hand that players used to console controls cannot keep up when using a keyboard/mouse. Of course the opposite is also true in that I suck when using console controls in an FPS.

I've been playing PC FPS games since my mid teens, starting with Doom, Quake, and later Unreal/UT. I agree that Quake3 and UT are way more fast paced than any FPS game available today. There are no better FPS training tools that those two games imho.

As for trash talking, it was just as prevalent in the old days. The difference now is that you can shout into a mic instead of typing. However, I have noticed that saying 'gg' after a match seems to have gone out of style.

 

[matt87_50]

meh, I jumped on CS source the other day for the first time in a few years and I was as good as I ever was. and unless MW2 is a completely different game to MW (which i've played) I'd say its hard to believe that these more modern games are more twitch based than CS, or Quake3 or Unreal tournament.

ok, ok, so you're talking about gamers that didn't grow up with shooters? fair enough, I'm just saying, I don't think games are getting MORE twitch based, If anything they are getting less so now.

well hell, it's obvious I suppose, with a controller instead of a mouse, how twitch based can it really be honestly it looks retarded to me.

 

[ayeohx]

BS. I'm 35 and I still hold the same rankings I've always held in 1st person shooters. I may have slipped a bit due to the massive amount of nerve damage in my arms and hands (no more PC shooters) but I'm still fairly deadly on the XBox.
I think that as we get older we may lose some of the competitiveness because real life (bills, family & such) makes getting the high scores a little less important.