As Gamers Age, The Appeal of Competition Drops The Most

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Lime

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New study on player motivations by age and gender - pretty interesting results:

In both the gamer and game research communities, we talk a lot about how men and women like different kinds of games or what games for women ought to look like. And yet, even though the 35+ gamer crowd is clearly growing bigger each year, it’s much less common to see discussions about how gamers change as they grow older.

The data we’ve collected from over 140,000 gamers via the Gamer Motivation Profile allows us to see how gaming motivations vary by age.

Competition is More of a Youth Motivation than a Male Motivation

Among the 12 motivations we measure in our model, the interest in Competition changes the most with age. In our framework, Competition is the appeal of competing with other players in duels, matches, or team-vs-team scenarios.
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Competition-768x384.png


The gender difference in Competition is large at first among younger gamers, but then disappears with age. As gamers get older, the appeal of Competition declines, but this happens more rapidly for men than for women. Thus, by the time we’re past 45, the difference between men and women largely disappears.

There’s another interesting take-away here. The biggest gap between men and women (among younger gamers) is smaller than the difference between the youngest and oldest men in our data. So age in fact explains a bigger portion of the variance in Competition than gender does.
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Strategy:
Strategy-768x384.png


We then looked for the motivation that changed the least with age. In our model, Strategy is the enjoyment of gameplay that requires careful decision-making and planning. You might think that strategic gameplay appeals more to older gamers than young gamers, but we found that the appeal of Strategy is the most stable motivation overall.

The data also showed that there is a fairly consistent gender difference in Strategy, with men indicating a higher enjoyment of Strategy in gaming compared with women independent of age.
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Conclusion & analysis:

In our data, we found that, overall, motivations decline with age. We think this is happening for 2 reasons.

First, as gamers get older and have a broader range of responsibilities and pursuits, they are less likely to rate any particular gaming activity as “extremely important/enjoyable”. Thus, their overall gaming profiles might appear deflated, but the relative order of their motivations would still be revealing.

Second, lower scores on these motivations aren’t necessarily “less” of a motivation. For example, low Excitement implies a specific kind of gameplay, and calm/stress-free gameplay is no less valid than fast/stressful gameplay. The same is true for preference for solo play (as opposed to highly social play). The appeal of solo play isn’t any “less” of a gaming motivation than social play.
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http://quanticfoundry.com/2016/02/10/gamer-generation/

Full report is here with lots of interesting data, but it costs $2500 :/
 
When I was younger, I loved HALO and Starcraft and stuff online. Now? It's either single player or co-op for me. The only time I ever do competitive online is either in souls games (defensive only, not invading) or Rocket League.
 
I can agree with this anecdotally.

I think the only real competitive multiplayer i've played in the last 2 years has been Destiny, and that was not for competition but just to get dailies done/level up some.

I played upwards of 18 hours a day of CS 1.4-1.6 but I haven't even played GO for more than 45 minutes since I bought it at launch

edit: i did play rocket league a bunch but that wasn't due to being competitive, it was because I wanted to unlock stuff for my cars and a friend wanted to play 2s
 
I pretty much canned competitive multiplayer around Killzone 2 time. I really enjoyed it but found I was playing that to the exclusion of all else.

I resolved to play through and address my backlog of games and focus on single player experiences.

There are exceptions. I found the co-op of Left4Dead to a more fruitful experience than head to head matches. And the persistent online of the Souls series deserves a mention.
 
I've never really been massively interested in competitive games. I find it all too stressful.

this happens more rapidly for men than for women
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While I'm no expert in maths, surely this statement doesn't mean a lot, considering the female group starts lower than the male, and they both end at the same point.

It's like skinny people on a low calorie diet lost weight slower than fat people.
 
This makes so much sense.

While modern gaming was gaining so much steam I've felt isolated when PVP FPS and RPGs started taking over.

Never liked forced online matchups where you have to communicate with people who may or may not want to cooperate. You could never get me to play toxic MOBAs or CoD online.

Even my friend who's a huge long time FPS online guy pretty much bowed out of the scene after Destiny.

Single player sign me up. Co-Op with a good friend is miles better than a stressful competitive environment. Sure, I play FFXIV but I'm in it for the story, lore, and content. Community is usually good in general as long as I stay far away from hardcore stuff.
 
Where's that comic about a new game coming out as a kid vs as an adult?

Strangely enough, this is the most I've been into competitive online gaming since early 2000s.
 
Co-op absolutely owns competitive MP in my eyes. Just not interested in what ultimately are shallow timesinks. Though everythings better with friends...

Love me some RL though!

EDIT: Even when I used to play a load of MP like Q3A I was always far more interested in gametypes like CTF rather than mindless TDM - it just felt better to play something that had an objective other than a kill counter. I still gravitate to support roles in competitive games too...

ps3ud0 8)
 
Well, here's the thing for me. Competitive games usually require insane reflexes that are either muscle memory or godgiven reflexes which you're either born with or have to take a lot of time training with.

As you age those reflexes start to wither (I know mine definitely have), and you are just limited by time to develop the second (but your reflexes won't be as high they used to be either way).
 
Yup, I agree here. At 32 I find I don't have the drive to be 'competitive'...maybe having a full-time job affects that to a degree?
 
I much prefer team-based competition than 'lone wolf' type scenarios. even then it's largely not worth the time sink to play those games at a competent level. Rocket League is the most recent example of a competitive game I really enjoyed.
 
I'm an outlier I guess.

I use to play CS competitively in my teens and it was amazing. I'm in my late 20`s now and not a day goes by where I don't wish I could just drop everything and go back to competing--especially with how big CSGO had become.

The drive to compete is still there but I'm stuck on the sidelines watching the tournies on Twitch.
 
Interesting stats, these are in line with my habits - I only played competitive multiplayer when halo 1 came out (1st year of Uni - age 18-19) until BF3 (age 29-30).

During my time at university, I would have played a lot of halo1+2, and in the few years after uni (age 23-27), played a lot of COD, then Battlefield:BC1/2 and BF3.

But with a 9-5 and living with girlfriend now (age 32), I'd play very few multiplayer games. Mario Kart, Splatoon - quick, easy to pickup/put down stuff. Certainly can't think I'd ever get back into a multiplayer shooter.

For me, it's for two main reasons:

1. Time - To enjoy a COD/BF or any other FPS multiplayer, you need a lot of time to play, learn the maps, unlock stuff, etc, and it never ends - I seem to gravitate towards games that are finishable nowadays (mobas have no appeal to me).

2. Money - I loved BFBC1/2, but in BF3 they started charging for map packs, splitting the player base, and the 'season pass' with 'VIP' content soured me on multiplayer FPS (I'd already given up on COD by that stage, as MW2 seemed to me to be the same as MW1).
 
I'm only 25 and I already agree. I don't have the time or energy to be competitive. I exclusively play single player games now, although I always have played more of them than anything else. I strongly prefer a good story or a meaningful experience over a high score or a kill streak.
 
I'm 26 and I love pwning noobs and improving my k/d on a regular basis. The only thing that's dropped is I'm less social because I primarily get stuck playing with teens and I can't relate to them at all.
 
I wonder if the drive to compete goes down also due to just not being able to keep up with the younger set.

i.e. How every League of Legends team you see is made up of teenagers and people in their early to mid 20s.
 
47 here. Oh so anecdotally true as well. I just don't care about winning in competition or "beating" that effing game anymore.

When I was in my late teens to early 20s, I'd relentlessly huntdown my and others high scores, in certain games just so I could put my .x. on the top initials. Every once in a while flashes of the old me show up. Latest being Resogun. Was in the top 100 scores for the Protector gameplay variant, now that score is like mid-late 140s. Closest I've come is 512 million and many 400 million scores.

If I was even two decades younger I might try harder to beat that score. If I was the first ages in my post, I'd be gunning for the top.

Shit, now I'm good for 3 kills a game in BF4 and don't care to get much better. It doesn't help, my skill was lower tier in such games.
 
I don't enjoy competitive gaming any less than I ever did... but as I get older I have other priorities that interfere (I mean you can't pause a multiplayer game to deal with kids or an emergency at work)... and now that I've reached the entry point to being middle aged I'm starting to realise that life is too short...
 
So weird, I started off playing competitive and single player games almost equally. Now I spend all my time on Pokemon and Smash with no time for single player stuff.
 
Do you guys find you are still competitive with asynchronous challenges? Like leaderboards or say lap times in time trials etc?

I still enjoy playing something like DC where Im just shaving off time to beat my PB or to get higher up the leaderboard and beat other PSN friends.

Just wondering if competitiveness could be reduce down to games that make compete/combat other people directly.

ps3ud0 8)
 
I enjoy both.

However, I'm more of a fighting game enthusiast. I don't to shooters for MP.

I still find myself decent in those. I'm not going to any majors haha. But I can hold my own online.
 
Looking at this thread I'm wondering if SFV could have a 'masters class' online for the 40+ year-olds that grew up with SF2' in the early 90s.

I'm 41...I feel old, yo. =(
 
That makes sense.

When you start competing, there's this hope that you have potential. As you get older, it becomes clear that you do or do not.

As you get older, your hands start to hurt, your reaction times gradually slow.

At younger ages, there's more free time and energy available to compete.

Competition can take up all of you if you let it. You can still be involved at various levels of dedication, but it can easily get out of hand.
 
Makes sense. I'm not exactly getting any more time to practice any competitive games the older I get, and I imagine that it's like that for a lot of people. That and I've come to appreciate playing multiple games instead of just playing one game for thousands of hours on end. There are so many great games coming out all the time that just grinding away at one in order to kinda win some of the time doesn't really appeal to me anymore. I'd rather rotate though a couple of single player games that I can play at my own pace, and not have to keep up with patch notes or content drops.

I swear, dropping Dota was the best thing I ever did in regards to playing games. If I want to dapple in competitive games, I'll just watch streams.
 
I haven't enjoyed a good SP game since Bloodborne.

Too obsessed with MP gaming. BF4, GTA, COD BO3. I stopped competitive multiplayer for like 7 years after COD4 but now its all I do.
 
At 38, my last competitive game was CoD4 on the XBOX360 a few years back. I had 20-something days played in that game. After that, nothing has grabbed my attention as much and I certainly do not have as much time for it.

Rocket League is a blast but I don't get as worked up over it as I have for shooters in the past.
 
ps3ud0 said:
Do you guys find you are still competitive with asynchronous challenges? Like leaderboards or say lap times in time trials etc?
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Now and again: mobile titles, racing time attacks, 'casual' games.

I think at 30 I have somewhat of a competitive drive still, nowhere near what it was a decade earlier, but in the last few months I played my share of BO3, GTA Online PvP, and Rocket League enough that I can still be sold on MP. I intend to try the PvP stuff in The Division.

I don't feel averse to multiplayer but sure, I'll probably take the single-player experience more often than not nowadays.

The article did get my attention about strategy. I can agree that I've never felt I've lost the appeal of micromanagement/planning out in games that allow it, and it's probably why 13 years later I can still dedicate hours to SimCity 4.
 
I wonder if some of this is the demographic of when people onboarded into gaming.

In the early years of console games, titles were generally singleplayer or only had local multiplayer for you and your immediately available friends. To end up in a large community, you had to be going to arcades or one of the earlier people playing online games on PC.

If we look at people onboarding into gaming now - and thus presumably younger - genres like MOBAs or DayZ-likes or even things like Clash of Clans on mobile are very popular, and online gaming is very easily accessible.

I tried looking for this at the link first, but couldn't quite figure it out. Were the motivation profiles capture over the course of a decade (while people were aging) and thus comparing their opinions, or were they captured at the moment?
 
Nirolak said:
I tried looking for this at the link first, but couldn't quite figure it out. Were the motivation profiles capture over the course of a decade (while people were aging) and thus comparing their opinions, or were they captured at the moment?
Click to expand...

It's not at all clear

The data we’ve collected from over 140,000 gamers via the Gamer Motivation Profile allows us to see how gaming motivations vary by age.
Click to expand...

Seems to imply that the data was gathered over time.
 
Nirolak said:
I tried looking for this at the link first, but couldn't quite figure it out. Were the motivation profiles capture over the course of a decade (while people were aging) and thus comparing their opinions, or were they captured at the moment?
Click to expand...

I don't have access to the full report and don't have time to look through the site, but maybe these two links answer your question:

Sample: http://quanticfoundry.com/v21-sample/
Gamer Profile Motivation: https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/lab/10
 
I'm 33 and generally don't care about competative multiplayer, but there are plenty of exceptions.

I do enjoy CS:GO from time to time, but I played CS way back in .6beta, so that could partly just be a nostalgia thing (plus it's just a good competitive game).

Kart/Smash always get some time, but they're on the friendly side of competition and tend to get more couch play than online play.

Splatoon gets online MP, but eschews most of the things I dislike in competitive MP, like your typical chat, which is probably why I enjoy it so much.

MMOs I tend to focus on the non-competitive aspects. When I do PvP I'm typically in a very laid back mood and don't take losing too seriously.
 
In my case, this is pretty accurate, but there's times I only have a few hours a week to game. When that situation arises I play almost exclusively competitive multiplayer, since it's good in smaller spurts.

I play whatever type of game fits my schedule, really.
 
I'm 26, and simply don't have the time to invest to play competitively. Even if I try to just play for fun in Halo 5 for instance, I don't feel like I'm playing well enough for my teammates to even appreciate the effort.

I might be able to get a few hours of gaming in a week, maybe more if it's a new game I'm excited about. Marriage, children, and a full time job as the sole provider of the family, means multiplayer is rarely an option for leisure time investment.
 
I was never very competitive but I did still enjoy the odd multiplayer game in my youth. Now all I bother with is fighting games and even then I don't feel the energy to play competitively for long. I'm not surprised by these findings.
 
I guess I'm weird. All my life I mostly played single player games. Now I'm 30 and constantly trying to improve in fighting games and planning trips to EVO and other tourneys and shit and think most single player games are boring dog shit now. I only play fighting games now. I find competitive multiplayer has the most depth and the most challenge and the most benefit from playing. You learn aboit yourself playing these games.
 
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