f13.net

I am 41 and it is obvious that I am worse at videogames than I've ever been. Obviously we are talking about action games, which in my case include anything that ranges from FPSs and RTSs, to brawlers, platformers, racing games, so pretty much any game that requires FAST reaction times and PRECISE movements especially in a multiplayer environment. Anyway, I remember being decent at FPS, and I know that I could aim at anything in a matter of milliseconds with a micro movemement of the wrist. I was never GOOD. But now... now I am terrible. I am always last or very close to last in every multiplayer action game I try. In Smite and MechWarrior I managed to fit somewhere in the absolute average, but considering how much I've played that's an awful result. And while an argument can be made about the newer generations being just better at it, I know for a fact I am simply not as quick and precise as I was.

I don't want to go into too many details, but it is obvious that now my reaction time is a few milliseconds slower than it was, and my movements are less accurate, meaning whatever I aim at requires another slight movement to correct the first one. In the meantime, I'm dead. I would go as far as saying that only five years ago (around 35) I wasn't this bad. I'd give examples, but they don't matter.

This makes me think and wonder. Of course we age, and of course our performances slowly degrade in pretty much every field. But it is only recently, with Smite, then a brief return to Counterstrike, and now Star Wars Battlefront, that I had to acknowledge that I am completely losing it. It's a strange feeling, to see how subtle is the rotting of your senses, your eye-hand coordination, your skills as a gamer. I've played football my entire life and I still do, but somehow that physical drop was expected so it didn't shock me the same way. Instead, we could be the first generation that is experiencing this with something so uniquely "barely physical" and "barely mental" as videogames. I wonder if there already are studies on the topic.

When's the first time you realized your videogames body and brain weren't the same they used to be? Or is it just me?
And, I mean, scientifically, what is it exactly?

Scientifically, I've seen studies that point to reflex time degrading starting at age 25 or so.

In gaming, I'm not sure that matters as much as people think, though.  There are certain challenges that are pure reflex, but a lot of it is planning and anticipation.  Depending on the game you can still do pretty well in a lot of situations or roles.  Playing Overwatch last week, for example, I couldn't snipe for shit, but there are lots of characters that are more about positioning or skill use than pure aiming and I think those are fairly friendly to older players.  Ambush characters I find are a lot easier to play as I get older.

Quote from Daigo (pro Street Fighter player) :
http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2014/aug/09/daigo-thinks-age-actually-advantage-competitive-fighting-games-opposed-other-games-shares-his-secret-maintaining-his-condition/

I realized it 3-4 years ago. Not that I was any great shakes at FPS games, but I finally reached the point that I simply couldn't get kills. My finger manipulation has always been slower due to injuries and abuse but it's finally gotten to the point that if I'm not shooting before that guy comes around the corner I'm dead.

It's why I go for games like WoT or "Tab-Target" games like WoW over Planetside, Overwatch or LOL. (Or why I only played support classes in the latter 3) I know I'll never align a shot and press buttons fast enough. The mandatory cooldowns or nature of gameplay put me on a more even playing field than pure twitch/ DPS stuff.

It's certainly not a new problem, just one that we're experiencing on a new platform of entertainment. Age happens.

I have definitely lost a step, in terms of reaction times and physical precision. There are a million little ways it hampers me, the shot that isn't as precise, the failure to match up anticipation of an opponent with the exploitation of it, more cognitive overhead and less reflexive action in response to subconscious awareness in complex situations.

I know more tricks, but I am less able to pull them off successfully. Not enough to lose the enjoyability of the experience, but enough to keep me from competing in the top tier.

--Dave

Edit:To answer the question posed in the title, it was probably around 37 that I first started to notice it, only the last couple of years (42-43) that it became undeniable.

Time devoted to it is also a factor. Honestly, I'm lucky to get in 5 to 10 hours a week "playing games" and that's everything, combined. My kid, at 19, will spend days in the summer where he'll play 10 hours at a stretch, at a single game.

I'm definitely slower, but mostly...I barely play enough to remember the key layouts. It's a rare game that I play steadily enough to make them instinctive (I think the last was ME3 Multiplayer, and I got no further than Gold games and I was decidedly average).

I don't know about age, but there was a RAMPANT cheating/hack problem with the Star Wars Batttlefront beta so I wouldn't put it all on you, Falc.

I've lost the obsessiveness that made me good at games, not a real physical loss but a lack of drive to excel that i used to have.

I'm with Threash, I began sucking at FPS when I stopped giving a shit.

I'd say that's what happened to me as well, just caring less, but then I have to wonder if that's just how I'm rationalizing it.
Maybe I started caring less when I noticed I couldn't compete with the top 10% anymore anyway.
I certainly rage a lot less than I used to, so it's not all bad.

Average reaction times do undeniably decrease with age, but there's enormous variation. If it's something that really matters to you then your best bet is to keep exercising your reactions.

Like Sky and Threash I stopped being interested in twitch/shooter games, and that's when my reactions noticeably slowed. I few years ago a group of friends and I fired up UT and had a blast for a few days. I thrashed them, despite being in my early 40s and 5-15 years older than most of the rest of them. At the time I was still playing a lot of things like WoT, Warframe, etc, and doing a lot of photography that required precise shutter release control.

Over the last couple of years I've played mostly Minecraft and what little photography I've done has been static, product photography. Picked up CODBLOPS3 a few weeks ago and sucked hard at it. Even in the single-player campaign I ended up turning the difficulty way down low because I simply wasn't reacting fast enough.

Use it or lose it.

I stopped being good at twitch FPS games when Tribes: Vengeance came out because after Tribes 1 and 2, nothing did it for me. T:V just put the nail in the coffin and Ascend just pissed on my grave.

At 47 I tend to enjoy the more sedate team games such as World of Warships and (not so sedate) Armored Warfare (suck it WoT) and EvE now and then.

Heroes of the Storm has replaced Smite and LoL.

Other than that it's SP games for me where I can (hopefully) control the pace but I've been dabbling with paladins because I like being mocked :D

37 here.

I never really played competitive multiplayer FPS games, so I really wouldn't know, nor I've been in some "serious" MMO group, lately. Honestly, when playing single-player FPS, I still have to notice a "real" degradation when it comes to my reflexes (#denial).

My dad, at 58, is still a regular videogamer, but mainly CRPGs and 4X turn-based strategy, with one big exception: action RPGs, especially Diablo II and Path of Exile. In that regard, especially since he only plays hardcore, he definitely noticed a degradation compared to how he rolled through enemies 10-12 years ago, that goes along side the incessant cursing when one of his HC characters inevitably dies a horrible and sudden death  :grin:

I'm in the same boat, definitely seeing a decline. I used to be a purple 2800 wn8 type player in Wot in my mid thirties now that I'm hitting 40 I was lucky to average out at 1800. Not only are the reflexes reduced so is there this thing I like to call "level of care". I think my level of care has dropped about 25%

Physical degradation plays a part but time invested I think is the larger determining factor (and considering how many games you post on Falc how do you focus?.:D). At 40 maybe you're not going to be better than the top 10% of players of a game, but that still leaves 90% to beat on. Then it becomes a matter of time spent in game. I've also noticed a direct correlation between my ability at CS and time spent each night (and it has to be every night , skip one and I start to fall off). I play one to two comp matches in CS:GO each night and can hold my own.

I think patience has a lot to do with it, as well as practice. I don't know if my actual reflexes have degraded at 32, but the execution in some things sure has.

For instance, ten years ago I was playing tons of UT, TF2, and the like. I could generally hold my own, and routinely stomped pubs in public games. But now, I don't think I could do that to the same degree - mostly because I don't play those types of games much anymore, and I also simply care less. I'm much less patient when gaming, much less inclined to play passively and let opponents commit mistakes in front of me. Now I tend to play much more aggressively online, with just a touch of YOLOing thrown in.

Console shooters, on the other hand, have never been my strong suit - I've always been average at best. This really shows whenever I am forced to PvP in Destiny.  :oh_i_see:

Some people would say that I always sucked at playing video games, but I started to notice about 43ish? - being a decade and a half past that now, I notice enough such that my game playing tastes are much different than they were. I don't really play FPS games much even solo, with rare exceptions. My game choices now tend toward games that don't involve time limits. I think tab-targeting is wonderful.

1. Most good FPS players are arm and wrist players, not just wrist. If you're playing wrist only you're likely holding yourself back. You sensitivity is likely way way too high. The highest I've seen in a pro player is still under 4.0 on 400DPI, and many are much lower.

2. Counter Strike in particular is a game with a very high skill ceiling, and there are a lot of players who put a lot of time in. Playing well is not just a function of reflexes, but map knowledge, weapon knowledge, game knowledge, communication, and so on and so forth. Anyone just jumping in every now and then is going to be shit even if they have great reflexes. It will generally take you at least are year or more of consistent play to find your level, and it's even more likely that you'll keep getting better over time, even as you get older.

I was always passable at PC FPSes, with the exception of sniping. Give me the time and I'll headshot anything and everything. The advent of console FPSes and the aim assist in them probably prolonged my competitiveness, but I found I kinda sucked in the CoDs and the high-twitch environments of the Xbox ADD crowd. I switched to Destiny on the PS4 and found I'm suddenly super competitive again, even at 44. I guess it depends on the game and the system.

I was already old and slow when I was playing Quake(World) and Counter-Strike competitively -- there was no way I could keep up with the kids in college back then -- so my decline hasn't been precipitous. I suppose it was during the era of Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 4 and TF 2, a decade after that period, when I realized there was no way I was going to be able to get back to that earlier skill level. I still play shooters and have fun with them, though.

I just re-installed Medal of Honor:Airborne, which came out in 2007.  I remember completing it back then with very few problems.  Flash forward to tonight and I died at least half a dozen times before the first mission was over.  I don't know if its age or what but I seem to be God awful at fps these days.

I recovered a good 90% of my twitch skills for FPS in one weekend of overwatch. The remaining ten percent or so does not seem like it would come back even with lots of practice.  The cognitive edge is a bit dulled out. It feels like I have less time dilation from concentration in fast moments. eSports types seem to peak at the very early 20's, and I feel that.

I remember when it felt like I could 'walk between the raindrops', literally timing the bullets from the other guy's gun so that I would whiz through his crosshairs untouched and do something insulting (stab him in the face, plant a mine under his feet, let off a shotgun blast in his crotch, whatever would be most infuriating for him to see in the killcam). I just don't have that kind of turbo mode any more.

--Dave

It ain't your old man bodies, it's your old man responsibilities. Your going form hundreds of hours of regular playing to like dozens at best. You got bills to pay and maybe kids of your own, where when you were young you could spend all your considerable free time just playing/thinking/dreaming about your next match.



Like E-Sports people peak around their early 20's because after that point you have to 'get real' with your life, unless you are one of the handful of players that are WILDLY successful and can support themselves entirely on their playing. Now that 'real' money is starting to trickle into the scene, your going to see more and more 'old timers' hanging around.

I agree. I've found that I just don't have patience anymore. I don't want to bang my head against a game and lose over and over again. That ain't fun. So I stick to games I know well or are a little slower paced so the learning curve is easier to tackle.

I've gone back to TF2 a few times recently. After a few matches some of the rust comes off and I'm at least respectable.

I was never great at video games.

I suppose, however, that for me it was Rainbow 6 Vegas when three of us elders took one side and one guy's twelve-year-old son took the other.  It was a massacre.  Must be what it's like to be a nameless enemy in any game ever.

My job used to be a lot easier, and I used to care a lot less.  I also had one less child.  I get 10-12 hours a week as opposed the second full time job worth I used to get in.  

I do think my skills have degraded but that could also be attributed to playing a narrower focus of games.  I don't play a lot of shooters.  RTS stress me out too much.  MOBAs take too much time for me to get good at, but I think my effective APM would be sufficient. I'd play LoL, DOTA2 or HotS if I could get near enough time to actually improve at them.  

I do notice a decrease in skill, but it's just hard for me to pin it on anything when I just can't play enough to improve at any game.  I have a baseline of better than average and it just never gets much better than that.  (Ard can attest).  I was only ever "competitive level" at a handful of games (UO, Quake 2, Tribes), and that's when I was in college and playing all of the time I should have been studying or partying.  I figure I need 2-3 hours a night at a single game to get to the point where I'd see actual improvement and judge where my gaming skills actually are.  

Of course, I just really don't care enough to get good.  I have more than enough games to keep me suitably entertained and that's all I really want.  I don't care much if I'm better than anyone as long as I'm not a detriment to my teammates (sorry for the "Tonkoring" fellas).

You are not.   :mob:

I don't feel like I've really gotten any worse as time goes by and I'm nearly 40, but I still have time to play games.  Get back to me in a year after my kid is born here in a month and we'll see.

The secret is , you can get plenty of gaming time with a newborn. I took up playing original CS with my son. How? Very easy...get home from work , have dinner and tell my wife 'hun you go to bed, I'll take him till his midnight feed'. Place him in bassinet , next to foot (so can rock with said foot when needed), play games to your hearts content. Done!

This is a great topic for us old dudes. I remember in EQ one of our guild members was a good 10-15 years older than the rest of us (and we were in our 20s). When adds showed up or something started to go to shit, he was always the last/slowest person to react in game. His "lack of attention" was sometimes - not often - the cause of our TPW and I would grind my teeth and curse him. Now I am experiencing what he must have been going through 15 years ago. Luckily for others I am not causong TPWs (since I don;t play those games any more) but when I am MMOing with a tribe of late teens/20s and it is up to me to save everyone's ass, I fail 4 times out of 5. If my PS2 K/D is 1.2 for the night, I am ecstatic.

It's mostly practice and familiarity. Or, as someone else put it "do piano players suddenly stop being able to play well as they get older?". If you are using FPS as a measuring stick, you have to keep in mind two hidden variables: map knowledge; knowledge of game mechanics. When I started playing BF3 and most recently Dirty Bomb, I died a lot, had a negative kdr, contributed very little to the team, and all that. My reaction time has remained just about dead average for a human since I was 15 or so, and my ability to fight reflexively is framed by that. However, once I figured out the maps, understood the timing, learned how the weapons worked - my ability to consistently top an average pub scoreboard has gone and stayed up.

Now, from what I've read on the subject as it relates to sport (because I play sport competitively), the neuromuscular structure does start to decay later in life (around 50 iirc), but this is regulated by training, health and biology. The rate is not a consistent thing, and varies from person to person. This ought to extend to video games as well, since you are reacting to visual stimuli.

Also, do keep in mind that most people will say "I'm pretty decent at X" - when in reality, the majority are actually crap.  :-P

In fact, here is a related study that shows visual reaction speed as being trainable over time.  (http://www.waynesburg.edu/docman/70-the-observance-of-the-visual-reaction-time-of-non-athletes-compared-to-athletes/file)

I've always sucked at FPS, so I guess the answer is "from day 1" for me.

If I wanted to "check" I'd have to go into MMO raid healing, since that's pretty much the only gaming activity that I've done that had any sort of meters applied to it.

But nah.  No time for that stuff, and no fun MMO's, really.  And no fun friends, either.

Worse, most people will THINK "I'm pretty decent at X" and remember that opinion more than the facts.  The more distant you get, the easier it is for confirmation bias to set in, the more vague and hard to recall the memories get.  Hard evidence of how good you were at Cyber Sled in the nineties is difficult to come by, if you even still talk with the people you gamed with a a kid they probably don't have particularly clear memories of it either.  It's easier to remember "I'm pretty good at Time Killers" than to actually remember much of what actually happened for most of your games.

I remember, when we started seeing digital rereleases of old school content, being amazed at how shitty I was.  I could beat Sonic no problem when I was a kid, now here I am dying all the time!  But when I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong, I realized that I probably was never as good as I remembered.  I could BEAT the game, sure, but I still grabbed 1-ups, so I apparently wasn't doing no damage speedruns or anything.  I had my little brother playing as Tails, I had strategy guides and maps all over the place.  But in my head, I remembered knowing every map top to bottom, blowing through the entire game with all the emeralds and no mistakes.

Anyone can become good at gaming, its all about patience and become aware of what happens. While reflexes certainly help playing as an enthusiast rely far more on having situational awareness and that's something you can learn. Action and fighting games is about learning patterns and while PvP means human players, human players has a tendency to become predictable.

In my 20's I could pick things up fairly easy, today I force myself to learn to be good. While it was brutal coming back to action games after a long hiatus due to mmorpg's, and even rougher because I had to learn how to use a gamepad after being a keyboard player for my whole life its something that I have overcome.  I find myself a better gamer at 40 than I was at 20, what I lack in reflexes I take back with determination.

My response time has definitely slowed a bit.  I used to compete in Unreal Tournament and Quake back in the day, then I got into MMO's. I am about to turn 42 in a couple months but I can definitely tell since I turned 40 that my shit was going downhill.    I still am pretty good at stuff like MWO or MMO PvP matches, but last time I tried to play some FPS stuff like CoD or Battlefield I was definitely getting my ass kicked.         

I used to play casual CS on a couple Cal-I clan servers who had members I was friends with and would participate in friendly scrims with them and other Cal-I level players. I wasn't up to their level then but I could hang, and now? Yeah no fucking way.

I can still chew people up in non-quake engine deathmatch titles however.

Going to say it again. But you're going to get your ass handed to you even if you have magic fingers reaction times if you just pop in to a FPS every now or then. Has nothing to do with age.

I play CS:GO several times a week, and have for the past year. I am immeasurably better now than when I started, as demonstrated both by my own opinion of myself, and my skill relative to those I play with (who have been playing for 3+ years). Another friend who only plays once a month or so is consistently poor.

I also played CS back in the beta days, when I was late teens early 20s. I'm pretty confident I am way better now than I was then.

It's not age, it's just life and lifestyle.

I once thought I was pretty good at Unreal Tournament until I decided to play online with randoms. The game had been out for like 5 years at that point, so the only people still playing were gods. I literally didn't hit a single person with anything in like 15 minutes. Point being, if you don't keep up you get left behind.

I don't feel like I've gotten any worse at games for any reason other than lack of practice. But I've never been big into multiplayer FPS games, which is where that sort of degradation would probably show up most. In genres I play more of I still start on the highest available difficulty level, like a real man.  :awesome_for_real:

I've never been big on FPS's even though I've played them alot.

My goal in an FPS was always situational awareness. If you're ever in a fight, you should always first realize where you are and then form a tactic to kill them using the map. My best example was in an old Planetside base with the covered stairs on the outer wall. Someone got the jump on me and I ran up the stairs knowing that they were a giant blind spot, jumped down and killed the poor fool from behind.

Mostly I just sniped since I could pin down entire platoons. You don't win battles by killing people, you win battles by tying up 30 fucks for 10 minutes.

I'm done with competitive gaming. I'm even mostly done with cooperative multiplayer. So I don't really care if I'm getting slow as fuck the older I get.

I play by myself and so the only one berating me for being stupid/slow is me.

I know very well that a good chunk of your ability in FPS is map awareness and constant practice. That doesn't have much to do with my situation though, as I have mentioned many different game genres. Also, lifestyle isn't my issue. I work 9 to 5 and then I dedicate ALL my remaining time to gaming. You could say that I am privileged enough in this stage of my life to have about 8 hours of gaming time every day, weekends usually go higher than that. Yes, that's right. My son is 21 years old (and plays less than me but is generally better at anything we play together), my Italian friends suck and are all playing the REAL FAMILY! game now so we never hang out, and my primary partner is a gamer too and doesn't always live with me (she's back in the US now). So, time and dedication aren't my issues. Gaming is my only addiction, and I actually take it too seriously. Sure, as someone else pointed out, I spread myself thin between many games, but that's why I mentioned MechWarrior and Smite because they are two games I have definitely stuck with for more than a year playing every night. And my results were still extremely disappointing. Sure, this could mean that I've always been terrible, but I can definitely feel that some issues that I've mentioned before are new:

- when I aim at something and quickly move the pointer on it, it's always a slightly imprecise movement that requires a correction. I can see this even if I am just chasing icons on the desktop on Windows. This didn't happen ten years ago. Aiming-eye-coordination issue that I didn't have.

- when I enter a room in an FPS for example, it takes my eyes a few tenths of a second to put everything into focus. As a result, I often don't recognize an enemy from the background. When I do, I'm already dead. This didn't happen ten years ago. I could have missed or been slower than my opposition but I didn't have problems seeing them. Eye-focus-contrast issue that I didn't have.

This is not to say that I feel like I'm 90 years old, my hands shake even when I am not doing anything or that I have to squint in my every day life every time something new enters my field of vision. But my everyday life doesn't require millisecond reactions or pinpoint precise movements. If you think about it, even our cars are easier to drive than videogame ones.

Clearly we all rot/age differently, as it is pretty obvious from the widely different answers in this thread. I might just need a new pair of glasses and I am not even kidding, or an eye visit, maybe I simply get less light in my eyes and with everything being somewhat darker comes longer reaction times. It is still obvious to me that my reaction and eye-hand cooordination capabilities have been subtly deteriorating in a way that is impossible for me to deny anymore, and wouldn't probably show anywhere else than in something as incredibly precise and fast as competitive action games. Dedication, tactics, smarts, all help a lot. But we are not all gifted with the same skill potential and so we are probably not all gifted with the same endurance. I am glad to see that some of you are still holding up better than me. Thank you for all the replies, they are valuable to me.

Don't get me wrong. We all get slower over time or have to deal with different things like slower reaction time or imprecise movement due to age or age-related effects.

At nearly 40 it hasn't slowed me down to a point where I can't play certain games though and so I don't really care all that much. I'm not really that much into multiplayer anymore and so it doesn't matter that much if I take a few tenths of a second longer to aim or don't consistently get headshots or the the highest units/min count in RTS.

So it's more a question if the changes in speed and accuracy you experience really affect your gaming in a real way which would suck or if you're just a bit angry that you're not as quick and ptrecise as you were ten years ago.

For me I can say that I notice that I'm not as good as I was twenty years ago but right now I still can play everything so who cares, really

Falcon as a dedicated gamer you know that the answer is always a bigger monitor and a faster video card!   :why_so_serious:

Falc, if you are constantly overshooting your desired objective, you're control interface is too sensitive or there is input lag. Nobody with as much practice as you should have the kind of deterioration you are experiencing, unless they have some kind of undiagnosed neuromuscular issue.

Maybe you should consider going outside, getting exercise and having more diverse hobbies. I don't mean that to be snide - it's good for your eyesight because it makes you focus on different points, good for your circulation, muscles, etc. 8 hours of gaming every day sounds very docile and possibly inviting some repetitive stress injuries. (Maybe minor ones that are registering as precision problems)

In professional gamers physical problems, especially wrist / arm related, are fairly common.

You may just be overdoing it and maybe need some "crosstraining."

I've found that while my immediate twitch response can't possibly match what I was able to do in my 20s and 30s, I've found the silver lining in some games that require impulse control. World of Warships is a good example; playing a Japanese destroyer is an exercise in patience: You can't just zoom ahead and start torpin' because the first enemies to the fight are normally other destroyers and very lethal cruisers. You have to pick your avenue of approach quite carefully to get an effective hit on a slow battleship. In my younger days I'd have had difficulty controlling the impulse to run in. Nowadays, I'm content to resist the pressure to engage and meander in the back while I see the lay out of the land. Most of the time anyway.

So, I just think that there are games that increasingly reward thoughtful gameplay and planning while keeping the action going. You just need to find one that you like.

Skimming through here... I am doing a great job if I can dodge sleep enough to get 10 hours of gaming in a week.  Usually it is much less.  What's the average for the group?

The average may be meaningless unless you divide F13rs into the 'parent' or 'not a parent' categories.

Probably 10 yeah. Sometimes more if I'm not traveling on the weekends.

10-20 for me depending on how much I get to play during lunch at work.

That's pretty fucking sad for childless people. :why_so_serious:

I watch lots of TV and sports.

I'm averaging 20ish. Not only childless, but blessed with a partner who games too. I kinda poop out at around 10ish and watch a thingie or two on the internets before heading for bed.  :geezer:

That and I'm technically an executive now. The job demands more time, and I travel a ton during the holidays.

TV is so 20th century.

Having kids (or more specifically, marrying someone with kids) has cut my gaming time down considerably. Mobile games (cellular, 3ds and Vita [including PS4 streamable stuff]) are a lot easier, since I can play while socializing while the family.

Gaming time starts at 8:15pm at my house. The 6 year old goes to bed at 8.  Usually 3 or 4 hours a night.

I find unless I'm in a tournament or something, I can't game for more than 1-2 hours at a stretch without wanting to do something else, even when the game is good. I've been doing Shadowrun Dragonfall in 45-90 minute chunks because I just have to stop after that. I think I have ADHD.

My first reaction was that you might just need new glasses =) Also, what Margalis said - our brains need different forms of stimulation to work at their best. Try to actually cut down a bit, and join a soccer club or go bowling, or something.

* It just occurred to me, you work nine to five at a desk job, probably, staring at screens? Then you come home and spend another four / five hours staring at a screen. Your eyes just get tired dude.

As is not being able to multitask it onto your second or third monitor.  

I'm getting about 2-3 hours a night and 3-6 on weekends depending on what's going on. However my kids are all over 10 and not into major time consuming activities. Most of my non-gaming time is sucked up in home maintenance or projects I tackle to get away from machines.

Last weekend for example I closed up a creepy window in my bed/ bath and then shampooed the rugs.  Means I haven't played fallout in about 4 days now

Thank you for all the advices, seriously. I was looking for this. Still, I might have exaggerated in the second post to stress that I am truly dedicated to gaming. As I stated in the opening post, I still play football semi-professionally so I am not a couch potato. Problem could really be in my eyes. One way or another, I've been wearing glasses or contacts my entire life and it's true that I spend -between work and games- about 12 hours every day in front of a monitor.

You might just be tired too. Most people don't sleep enough, and you might have just gotten used to this over time and not realise how much it's having an effect, compared to younger days when you probably slept a lot more.

Could be bifocal time. Sucks but for those of us who've had glasses since preteen years the time for readers comes in the early 40s.  You should be getting annuals anyway but make sure they do the reading check in addition to the distance one.

I'm not a parent, but my gaming habits are probably 5 hours or so most weeks, then occasional huge binges a few times a year. But it's tough when you make games and have a lot that needs to get done, to justify playing a game for a significant amount of time.

Yeah, I can't combine my TV time and gaming time. I want to focus on one thing, not be continually distracted by this other thing. About the only time I can do that is if I'm painting miniatures - then I'll turn on something that doesn't necessarily require my full attention like a baseball game, a non-Liverpool soccer game or the Nightly Show or Late Show. But dramas/story-based stuff? Nope. I want my full attention on those.

Same.  I've never understood people that would watch a movie/show while gaming.  I tend to give 100% attention to the task at hand, so I either game or watch but never both.

As for the thread topic, I have noticed a small but significant decrease in my reaction time as I've aged.  I was never sure if I was just coming back to the norm out of a lack of practice or through some genuine twitch response decay.  I'm sure it's some combination of the two.  I did run a 40 for the first time since my 20's and that has sure showed a slow down. 

I'm finding that I now prefer strategy games with some twitch, but as little as possible.  WoT and HoTS seem to be perfect for me.

Sex happens between 8:00-8:15, then.  I like a firm schedule.

That's what she said.  :why_so_serious:

 :oh_i_see:

I can game and watch TV if the game isn't story-based. Like if I'm playing D3 or HOTS? I'm watching sports on the TV. If I'm playing Witcher 3? No.

I can only do one, but I don't have that attention surplus disorder that you find in some people.

You can play Hero League in HOTS or do high level instances in D3 while watching tv?  You're a better man than I am. 

If you're just grinding pve... that I could understand.

Like others are saying I can game and watch something depending on the game. I almost always have Twitch up but I'll turn the volume way down if it is something I need to focus on.

Uh no. I'm just grinding and having fun. Under no circumstances am I doing anything really competitive in gaming anymore. That's part of the age thing for me, I have the patience of a gnat when it comes to that shit anymore.

This is clearly never ever gonna happen simply due to the fact that there is no way to check people age. But, and I hate to admit it, I would LOVE for online games to have some servers for older people. In football for example there are 35+ (and even 45+) Leagues for a reason. Now, again, this is never gonna happen, and I would probably suck anyway, but daaaamn I miss it.

In other news, turns out I DO need new glasses and that my eyesight has seriously declined in the past two years since the last check.

*whine*

Leagues based on age? You suggest forming some kind of community!

That's no longer possible, unfortunately.

Bow down to your new, horrible matchmaking overlords.

Yeah, if there is one thing I really dislike about multiplayer gaming lately it is the lack of a server browser.  After Tribes: Ascend just released that major patch for the first time in a few years I loaded the game back up and was delighted to see a list of servers I could choose from.  What a novelty!

Welcome to life over 40. I understand it's even worse in the 50s and 60s and vision needs checks every 9-6 months to keep-up.

Well, I'm 56 and I still just get vision checks every year or two, and my prescription hasn't changed for several years now.  But I do take off my bifocals and put on my computer glasses to use the computer, both at home and at work!  :geezer:

As for slowing down, I don't play competitive anything anymore, or high stress games like FPS or RTS either. But yeah, I still notice the slowed and less-accurate responses. I just chalk it up to alcohol. And then I take another sip.  :why_so_serious:

My vision has actually gotten noticeably better recently. Still need glasses though.

Mine did too for a few years, about 15 years ago...

I've been playing Nuclear Throne for sixty hours over the course of the last ten days and this game makes it explicitly clear that I'm too old for that shit. I've once reached the eponymous Throne (Level 7.1) and instantly died.

A dual stick shooter bullet hell where my fourty year old reflexes simply can't keep up. I've seen videos of people looping the game (the game's term for NG+) three times. There's so much going on in terms of number of enemies and shit happening on screen in NG+++ that I can't even comprehend what's happening anymore.

I usually manage to get about half way through until I day due to too much shit going on and me no longer writing in time.

Doesn't matter it's insane fun even though I suck at it.

To be fair, though, that still puts you in the top 10% of all players (according to the achievement stats).  Nuclear Throne is a fairly difficult game, I'm not sure how much you can blame old age.  As you noted in the other thread, those guys who are on loop three have mostly been playing this for years.  You don't need millisecond reflexes, most of the projectiles have travel time and rely more on preparation and positioning than split second bullet dodging.

I was stuck on Lil' Hunter for like a week right up until Christmas Eve and I still haven't gotten to the throne once, so you've got me beat, but I don't know that young me would be any better at this.  It wasn't twitch reflexes or attention that was kicking my ass, it was not knowing his patterns and not having a feel for the fight, and I don't know that being older has impacted my abilities there.  Probably the one advantage my younger self had was a more limited budget, so if I got Nuclear Throne, that was the one game I'd get for the next few months, so that was all I'd play for weeks.  Nowadays I'm swimming in games I haven't even played, and the instant Nuclear Throne gets boring I'm off to kill some orcs or whatever, so I suspect my rate of progress is slower than it would have been as a kid, but I don't know that I'd blame old age for that.

I have the same kind of thing these days. It depends on the game, though. Games where I can set my own pace (like MMOs, Destiny, etc) I find that I can play for much longer stretches than something like a relentless FPS. The FPS I think I got the best at would have been BF1942 and DC. Of course, over the years, those games have all but disappeared to be replaced by an endless stream of newer game, so changes in systems and map knowledge goes by the by - and I have neither the time nor motivation to "keep up". I probably average between 5-20 gaming hours a week when I'm at work (as opposed to holidays like we are now). Most nights after work I'm too smashed to give the slightest fuck about throwing a game on.

During the megadrive/SNES/arcade years as a teen I could drop in and out of alpha/zen more or less at will when playing SHMUPs. Noticed that was harder in my 20s, rare in my 30s and cant remember the last time I did it.

/necro

One thing to check, before deciding that your reaction time stinks, is your video card. I recently replaced mine and realized I'm not as bad at playing as I thought, because of an old graphics card that was creating lag for me to respond correctly.

(I'm still not good, but not nearly as bad as I was.)

I fix this by playing console games, but yes, sometimes it is just a shitty game experience.

Yeah but even then... the console kiddies are light years ahead of me in terms of refined thumbstick skills as opposed to my evolved mouse skills. I'll just stick with killing bad players and be fodder for the 733+ console players.

I'm not sure I was ever good enough to be anything other than shit in competitive MP.  Ask around the board.  :oh_i_see:

I loved playing RTSs but about ~10 years ago my click fu just wasn't cutting it anymore.  Maybe for single player, but not any competitive play. I used to be not great, but better than average and even competed in tournaments (AoE, back in 90s).

Never really got into FPS games other than Wolfenstein 3D :D

A bigger factor for me, than age, might be poor vision -- even with corrective lenses I still have trouble with smaller, moving pieces.

Now I just play strategy games like Civ, Paradox offerings, & Hearthstone.

Time to play is a big factor -- even as our kids our grown, I just can't skimp on sleep like I used to do (i.e., be playing all night, & notice sun rising :)). I watch a lot of pro Hearthstone streams, & I see pros doing 8-15+ hour streams & I just wouldn't have that kind of energy unless I guzzled G Fuel and/or coffee.