Gaming

I'm much younger and there are some days that I suck at certain games then the next day I like destroy a match.

Try harder

Don't worry about it. Reflexes and memory might gade, but continuing to game can preserve cognition or reduce it's decline. We're going to be 80 playing NES mario stuff.

Still doing okay at 51, stay healthy and you can still compete although the energy drink guzzling sweats run circles around you.

I can still kick arses in FPS games as map knowledge and skill still help.

I play games on Normal or Easy mode, works wonders and still plenty fun

Video games are like everything else in this world, the more you do it the better you are at it, most of us probably heavily gamed in teenage years to mid- late 20s but as life happens you play less…. and you’re just not gonna be as good as you were when you were gaming from 830p-2am everyday. And that’s fine! I find myself enjoying more and more simple roguelite games or metroidvania where it’s real easy to play for an hour when i have time and put it down to resume later . Ori and the will of the wisps was prob my favorite game in the past few years. Multiplayer games- instead of regularly rotating through 3-5 games i play like one. I don’t play enough to get good at multiple games; half of FPS is map knowledge, knowing spawns, what corridors are frequented, what’s meta, etc etc.. my friends and i find ourselves playing more coop (warhammer darktide right now) or simple party games like gang beasts or chicken horse rather than COD or halo, just don’t play enough to do anything but get stomped. But man you light up some old games like black ops or master chief collection and we still destroy lobbies, it’s like riding a bike. i just don’t enjoy getting sweaty like i used to

You definitely won't be as good but it shouldn't be by a lot. You probably just aren't putting as much time/effort into it as you used to.

Depends.. vision can get worse with age, if you arent sitting comfortable due to body changes you could have issues with physical movement affecting your dexterity/hand eye coordination a bit. also depends what games. i play fps games with similar skill as several decades ago in regards to reaction time, but i havent had many breaks. its a practiced skill technically. so.. you playing on a console or you using a mouse n keyboard?

Idk why but your title reminds me of Lucas Graham; 7 year old song

Yeah I don't play fps for that reason same age as you. Though I don't have issues with timing things, it's the reaction times that cause issues for me.

i quit gaming. it's all cut-scenes, storylines, questing, and cartooney now.

I'm 35 and I can feel my self getting worse at video games slowly...but I'm still fighting it haha. I feel like it's normal as we age.

• We're slower
• We're older
• We have less energy after we finally get to play (after chores, when family is asleep, when kids are asleep, when you're finally alone, etc)
• We have less time to play in general
• We have more interruptions as we try to play
• Hands or fingers hurt just from being old or because of work/chores/yard work/etc

Personally, I hate it when people say lower the difficulty. So I've been fighting that for years now..but eventually I know i might have to. For now, as OLD as it sounds, stretching my fingers and doing hand exercises helps a ton. I recommend looking some stretches on youtube and give it a try.

Good Luck old man! :)

Typically as we get older we don’t have the time to devote. I lower the difficulty just because I don’t have the spare time to grind, etc. and my backlog just gets bigger.

Extremely normal to fall off any time after 28. I was a competitive StarCraft and super smash melee player in my 20s but by 30 i couldn't even come close to the APM I had just 2 years prior. I used to pride myself on dismantling hard games and now I play everything on normal or easy. If it doesn't have difficulty settings, I look stuff up because I'm an adult with responsibilities and don't have infinite time to explore every inch of every game.

This is a little reductive but I think, as you go into adulthood, you have to handle more challenges in your real life so games don't serve the same purpose anymore.

For example, I do a lot of pvp at my job and while commuting so I don't need that much of it in my gaming. I still get the irch every now and then but WoW, LoL, and CS pvp rarely interests me anymore when they were my life back when I was a student.

I find I play more chill games like cities skylines, total war, and sometimes conan exiles or valheim. Maybe fire up Skyrim or Bannerlord every now and again. Gaming helps me turn my brain off now rather than provide extra challenge to it.

Very normal. I turn 40 next year. I used to be very good at online shooters when I was early 20s I remember having games where I was like 75/10 in COD. Played in the grand finals for SOF2 tournament back in the day. These days I would be lucky to break even once in every 5 or 6 games even with the best hardware you can buy. Much prefer to just play single player games and accept I'm just getting old.

Nah, what game is giving you heck? I'm about to be 47 and still can hang in some games. For example I'm a ARAM junkie and get some attention here and there. Give me Fizz and I'll piss off the whole enemy team 😁

Just remember all the other stuff you've got good at. 15yr olds can't raise kids, hold a job, cook, maintain a relationship or support their friends very well.

(Generalisation people, don't need individual case studies proving me wrong)

53 yo here and still playing on normal/difficult. (I set only horror games on easy because they make me too anxious lol). never stop fighting !!

i've seen retired pros talk about how once you start to hit your mid to late twenties your body just simply doesn't have the same reaction time and movement speeds it had when you were younger. just look at the ages of all the pros in most competitive games. there is a reason they are all so young.

the best you can do is try to take it a little less seriously and focus on having fun. try to find positives in your failures and celebrate them. compliment your opponent at the end of a loss!

find ways to practice and do warm up arounds before your gaming session. for example if you're playing shooters look for a 3D Aim Trainer and play that a bit before hitting the battlefield. playing a moba? fight bots for a round or two.

if you're playing for extended hours, get up once in a while and walk around. hope any of this helped. best of luck gamer bro! hang in there

We're around the same age, and though I don't know that I'm getting worse, my ability to throw time at mastering games isn't what it used to be. It could be as simple as that. Also, seeing as 41 is a prime number, you can say you'll be back in your prime soon!

I get that, though I'm just in ny 30s. I dont think its that I'm worse at games. I can still get good, but I dont have time to dedicate to it anymore.

If I sit down and play a shooter every day for 3 weeks, my twitch reflexes will start to come back.but I dont have that time. And if I do, I can't keep it up before work and life take ahold again.

im 58 still gaming i playing bl2 currently but play bl3 NMS, tiny tina, god of war fortnite etc an so on, you lose a step but pushing yourself helps keep you sharper than if you just stop trying But yer just dont expect to go toe to toe with the young whipersnappers on the COD mutliplayer shite type games

Im 43 and still doing well when I have the time to commit to getting gud, but that is rare. I do tend to play single player stuff on easier difficulties now because I just dont have the time to commit to failing over and over again when I just want to experience the game/story and move on.

That said physical health is also a factor. There is a reason a lot of e-sports pros exercise a lot and keep in good shape. Healthy body = healthy mind. I think its pretty common for work and life to get in the way leading to most people being in less good shape as they enter middle age and that definitely has an impact on cognitive function as well. So if you arent already exercising regularly you can start going to the gym... and then you will have even less time to play games 😅

I'm 44 and playing the best League of Legends of my career (been playing for over 10 years). If you're letting yourself go in your old age, getting fat, not active, etc., then yeah you're gunna fall off in life and probably even in gaming to a certain degree.

39 here, and in reality you adjust the type of game. You start to enjoy more complex but slower games. Fast paced stuff just isn't my thing anymore.

My last straw was joining the homies to play battlebit, they keep going at it non stop for about 2 hours. Me, after 1 map, I feel my eyes burning, can't seem to know what's going on in-game, and my concentration is way too thin to handle the demand.

It's fine, just enjoy.

I don’t know man, I just turned 50 earlier this month and still start with normal, then I’ll try harder. That’s always been my method. I did feel good lately when i tried to beat the original GOW1,2, and 3 on the ultra hard settings and still beat it. I know it’s not the toughest out there, but it’s still pretty challenging

Senility kicks in early for some.

reaction time slows down with age

I am almost 30 and the games I used to play on hardest starts to drop to mid dif and so on. I no longer have time or energy to face them over and over until I get through no shame in that.

I would just try normal, and if it was fairly easy or doable, but it up on a second playthru

I'm 35. 10 years ago, I was semi-employed and still living at my parents' house. I'd get a new game and wouldn't think twice about spending 8 straight hours learning all the strategies/moves and then having 50 attempts at beating a boss/getting through a specific level. I just don't have that patience or time now. I got the 2018 GoW game a year ago and was loving the gameplay right up until I had to face a Valkyrie. I died 3 times in a row without even getting her below 50% health and immediately turned down the difficulty. I can still hop on a game of Left 4 Dead Versus or Black Ops Deathmatch, 2 games I played constantly in my late teens and early 20s, and finish near the top of the leaderboard. The ability is still there for games where I developed it, but unless I suddenly double my salary and cut my working hours in half, I'll probably never get that good at another game again. And that's ok.

Yes. I used to be such a beast in online shooter games back in my teenage years. Then in my twenties I just couldn’t keep up anymore. I no longer play online shooters because as a 32 year old I simply can’t keep up with the spastic reflexes of teenagers.

Same boat, turning 41 in a few months.

I still play a decent amount of games, but not like I used to, so I'm not as good as I used to be. Plus games are a lot harder in some ways now because on top of being mechanically good at the game, you have to understand the "meta" now and build accordingly since so many games are open world or have complex leveling systems. Back in our day, more games were linear and had far fewer "build" options.

I don't feel like games are as casual as they used to be in general. There are many more layers of complexity in the average game now than before. All that stuff adds up to games feeling harder for players that are less invested in them.

The genre of games I play has changed over time. When you are younger, your brain goes through more cycles, than when you are older. It is why when you get older it feels like the years are much shorter than when you are younger.

To put it in gamer terms, when you are younger your brain is like a CPU at 100Ghz. As you age, it gets lower and lower, for example 40Ghz.

check your latencies. I thought the same (around your age) but I was running through an HDMI router 🤦🏻‍♂️

Now I'm pew pewing with the best of them and am usually the top scorer of my team if not the match on COD, suck it 16yr olds with your reflexes 🖕😂

Sincerely, old guy.

I'm nearing my 30s and can already notice that my reflexes aren't as good or accurate as they used to be when I was a teen. Especially in first person shooter games. But I'm pretty sure practicing fast paced games helps with keeping reflexes in a good shape.

Same, brother. Back in college, I used to main tank for a very prestigious and successful WoW raiding guild across 4 expansions. But then work and life started to interfere and I just wasn't "the guy" anymore.

Then came the last time I went to Blizzcon to meet up with everyone. Thankfully, it coincidentally fairly nicely with Blizzard's overall fall from grace. (I was in the auditorium during the infamous "Don't you have cellphones" line.) But I miss the friendship, the comradely, the shared trails and triumphs. I'm a combat veteran, and yet I draw more personal pride from what I did with those geeks from around the country fighting internet dragons than anything I did in the military.

I don't play much in the way of multiplayer games anymore. I just have too many responsibilities now to guarantee a blocked amount of time for anyone other than my family. Occasionally I'll get with some old friends and we'll try out a new game for some novelty, or go back to an old classic. But it's not the same. It'll never be the same.

Some people don't understand those guys whose athletic careers peaked during high school or college. I do. I remember staying up late instead of studying or doing homework to practice a new rotation I came up with, testing my reflexes, or just helping someone do their dailies. I used to enjoy engaging World bosses solo just to see how long I could survive. I tanked things so well sometimes that they had to patch away my ability to survive them.

Don't be sad you're not the same guy you used to be, be happy you were the man; at least for awhile.

You can’t contribute a mental decline of hand eye coordination to age. Like golf or basketball, those who played never loses their touch. I do believe as we age though we no longer have the drive to compete like we once did, so you may end up giving up earlier and accept the outcome of defeat rather than grind through and push on

Lack of concentration is my guess - other stuff on your mind maybe? I've got 20 years on you and I play my games on hard or above!

I don't play competitive multiplayer games any more tho'.

Mid 40s, I am objectively worse at FPSs. My aim and reaction time are worse than they used to be. Still do pretty good with platformers, adventure games...well, as good as I ever did. I'm playing FZero99 and man, I don't know how these guys get so many wins. I'm still struggling to get 1!

And next year...

yeah...

Your reaction time is slower than it used to be and that makes sence as the older you get the lower it gets.

You proberly still better than me and i'm 26

I just turned 53. I still game as much as I ever did. Somewhere in there I managed to find time to learn to do metalsmithing and glazing. I started playing when Space Invaders came out in 1978 and the games just keep getting better every year.

I fell off when I started college