Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
You are wrong. Older gamers are not more resistant to change. Most MMO's really are just shallow.
AccountDeleted12341
Member Posts: 351
This is a repost from another thread, to start a new topic. The real reason older gamers like their older games and dont like the new games? It's definitely not because they're older now.
As someone who actually holds a degree in Family Studies & Gerontology (the study of the elderly), I wanted to debunk this myth, among others, and educate the forum here as to the facts about aging. I was disturbed by how many people jumped to agree to a complete and utter myth.
Originally posted by a Misinformed UserOP you are right that as you age people are more resistant to changes.
I would like to see real scientific research articles supporting this random claim.
Honestly, I am sick and tired of the laymen spouting off random statements as if they're automatic facts just because they fit a popular stereotype.
How about a few links? If this is true, it should be easy enough to find some supporting evidence.
I mean, come on... with a single moment in google and a few clicks of the mouse, you can actually grab the specific article or research theorist and paste their name or a quote into the OP along with a hyperlink. That way people can actually believe it if it's true, as opposed to mindlessly agreeing because it sounds "true enough" because they're preconditioned to believe in stereotypes.
If you actually do real research on the matter, you will find most of the commonly held stereotypes on old people are wrong.
Try this out, it has a lot of facts in it, that are confirmed by actual research and common knowledge in the field of gerontology. A field in which I hold a degree in, so I think I'd know whether or not old people are "more resistant to change".
It is a powerpoint, which holds a lot of facts in it, along with common myths.
Myth (Slide 39)
Most older adults become set in their ways and are resistant to change.
The Facts: "The majority of older people are not "set in their ways and unable to change." There is some evidence that older people tend to become more stable in their attitudes, but it is clear that most older people do change. To survive, they must adapt to many events of later life such as retirement, children leaving home, widowhood, moving to new homes, and serious illness. Their political and social attitudes also tend to shift with those of the rest of society, although at a somewhat slower rate than for younger people.
Older individuals have had extensive experience adapting to change! "
Edit: I strongly suggest reading through the powerpoints. They're extremely brief, and you go through them fast. If you're interested, you can read the actual paragraph of information in the slide which interests you. There are some very important myths debunked, such as the common myth that old people do not get their funk on. Not only do they get their funk on, they are VERY funky.
Comments
As a Certified older person, I applaud this thread....
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I actually have fond memories being lost in FFXI.
The feeling of accomplishment that is heightened in a very unforgiving game seems lost this generation. Being repeatedly invited to elite japanese parties because I was well geared and performed very well will always be a feather in my cap.
yes, new games are shallow.
A: /faceroll to max level
B: pvp until blue in the face in a pre-designed "warzone", or "battlefield" or whatever they decide to call that particular incarnation.
C: Raid until blue in the face.
Oh, OK.....so most of these games also offer some kind of very rudimentary crafting system...enough for someone with no attention span to be able to make n00b gear for their alts.
But seriously.....how many modern "MMOs" even let you sit in a chair anymore??
It's combat, combat, combat, with a side of combat, from one level-appropriate zone to the next, all the way to the lobby, where you wait for PVP matches to pop or a raid to form.
Yeah...shallow....big time. I really hope that the new wave of indie games pans out and gives us something worth playing, or the MMORPG industry is done for.
The irony is that single player games are getting more sandboxy all the time...and the more sandboxy they get, the better they sell.
Kids make fun of mmorpgs now.
Now what?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Funny. The quote you did said older people DO tend to adapt to change at a slower rate than younger people.
It's not that older people are IMMUNE to change, they're just MORE resistant to change.
The key word is 'more'
Everybody is, to an extent, resistant to change.
Various factors can make you more so.
Being older is one of them. 'More resistant to change'. Article doesn't prove anything other than the article writers aren't 100% sure what the word 'more' means.
Everybody is resistant to change. Older people are slightly more so on average.
They've got a +2 to it, from leveling up.
You would think MMORPG people would be familiar with grinding abilities to be better at them.
Older people have spent their whole lifetime grinding their 'resistance to change' stat.
Resistance to change isn't always bad, by the way. Change isn't always good.
In fact, by reading your title and original post, I can see you think that modern MMORPGS =have= changed, and that's bad. You are resistant to modern MMO changes.
That is not a value judgement, that is a statement of fact. I am not judging that as being bad or good, just something that simply is.
Damn GW2 has made me type everything in really short sentences thanks to the 3 line chat limit.
i honestly have to say that MMO's of the past where really shallow too. but. and thats a really big but. They did not feel as shallow. Because well what u say is true its combat combat combat, and its in either a BG or during raids or chaining dungeons. and Everything is on rails. all those features are on rails.
Now mmo's in the past had not much in them specially compared to now. But they are alot more intresting because they are not on rails. There issnt this convinient battleground or LFD dungeon. heck there wernt even dungeons they where shared spaces all none instanced and hard ass hell because nothing was scripted.
You had to go out and do stuff and while doing stuff you came acros intresting things. i had tons of days where we set out to do a certain thing and at the end of the night we went to do something completely else because that was what we ran into at the time.
Randomness = fun. not this scripted bullshit.
Well they took a known fact, and drew an unsupported conclusion from it.
From about mid-20's/30's on, your brain actually begins to shrink and you lose neurons. A childs brain has about twice as mnay synapses as an adults brain and from the teens into adulthood, "pruning occurs" where some pathways are strengthened and others that are not used fizzle and die.
However losing neuron does not mean that new patterns of connections, new mgrams cannot be made between existing neurons. This is ultimately what learning is, new connections.
edit - admittedly there is a real question about familiar pathways being strengthened and it's effect on reduced abliity to change adapt... however a question is not a conclusion. Any researcher worth is salt that says that would then follow it up with something like "further studies would be needed to determine any relationship..."
This is true ( I'm no expert ) but the saying really comes from how we learn. A child knows nothing so it's brain is more accepting to learn form outside sources. As we age and gain experience our brain tries to look to past experience rather than "new" information. This is where you get old people who never want to learn anything new.
It doesn't mean it's like this for everyone though. It's been proven that keeping your brain active and learning new things helps stop this ...side effect of age and gaming is something that definitely forces people to keep learning new things.
Like any stereotype, it's founded in truth but doesn't apply to all.
Pft. I've been playing it for over a year, am in the top 1000 achievers list, and am still finding new things, and new things to do and new ways to get better and lord it over those lesser than me.
It's just DIFFERENT. :P
Every time one of these threads pops up and I notice it, I say the same thing:
For a lot of people, once you've had a taste of an MMO game where players are the primary content, you'll never enjoy scripted content the same way again. It's dead, shallow and contrived by comparison.
Also, today's MMO games do not pull in a diverse player base of interesting people, because the game itself is not interesting and offers nothing for creative, support and political types. One of the main reasons games like Star Wars Galaxies were so interesting is because they pulled in all kinds of people, not just folks interested in combat. You get a completely different in-game community with a deeper game that offers systems and focus on player created content.
I've been on this site a few years, and I've seen an increasing number of people here become bored to death with recent themepark games. Why? Because the content is more or less the same thing rehashed over and over again by game developers who just don't get it.
It has nothing at all to do with age, and has everything to do with asking players to enjoy Candyland when they would rather play Chess or Risk.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
You my friend are better with words
If i want to play a game i go play a game.
I play MMO's for something diffrent. Mindtrigger explained that nicely.
You're making the same mistake people make on this site over and over again. You assume the few hundred people that post here represent what the mmo market wants.
The fact that all these shallow mmos make money year after year only proves you're wrong. People DO want candyland and have no interest in an mmo with any depth. It's why all the " great" as we see it mmos died or changed.
Those of us that do want more are probably SOL...at least for the foreseeable future.
The opposite is true too though. Young people are too welcoming of "change" (AKA hype). With a few exceptions, teenagers and children have the worst taste in *every form* of media of any demographic on the planet. It's not their fault really, they just lack the context to compare the "new big thing" with what has come before so are suckers for marketing hype and shiny things.
Some things need to change but change for the sake of change just leads to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Young people should be glad there are some of us older folks around to point out what they've lost when things change, even if they don't listen. I know, I didn't listen either at their age.:)
This ^
I've read just as many (probably more) 'facts' that suggest the exact opposite of what the OP is trying to say. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. But we aren't talking about outliers, we're talking about the general public here (the masses).
Not only that, but forums like this (mmorpg.com) server to support such claims. I know people don't like to hear potential flaws with a demographic they're a part of (and as such, potential flaws about themselves), but that doesn't mean they aren't valid.
How many games must we all push to play the exact same why, while criticizing that they play the exact same way, before we realize that this is not a problem with poor game design, so much as it is a problem with US. How we perceive how games have to be played, and the assumptions we make about games as a result? How many games do we need to support a need for gear grinds, for vertical progression, for a focus on 'endgame', before we wake up and realize that; while that worked in the past, it is NOT a sustainable design model.
This is just as much a problem with us, as it is a problem with the games. Designers and gamers are re-enforcing each others' bad habits. And this is a phenomina that is seen over and over again across many different areas. Hell, one of the chief principles of marketting is the 20 year cycle. How every 20 years we tend to gravitate back to what used to be popular, and treat it like 'the new thing'. These are documented trends that happen every few years like clockwork.
This has become a documented part of human sociology. There is overwhelming evidence that people, in fact, do not change nearly as much as they wish to believe. That the few who do (and we're talking significant change here, not switching from blue to green pants), have to make a conscious, significant effort to do so. Meaningful change is something that is difficult to achieve, and most people don't (or can't) put in the effort. This also applies to gamers.
Iunno bout' that... From what I seen they seem to actually hate kids like "wtf are these kids doing in my game!" and "your adopted and your parents don't love you, now gtfo!"
All games are more shallow lately, not just MMORPG's. There are some good games out there still but the shallow ones sell so well it would be suicide for developers to not follow suit.
AI is lacking compared to 10 or so years ago. Visual technology has advanced so fast things like AI never caught up when it came to resource management priorities, and since there is no demand for smarter games developers can save time and money by keeping these areas more shallow. Just my opinion.
I can't agree with that fully... The field of AI in general is very advanced compaired to what it was. I think a lot of developers have just forgotten that some of the smartest AI out there...Is really very dumb. When AI is guided by only a few simple rules. Things like Monsters (as an implemented exampleas apposed to AI in Gaming in general) end up doing actions that are ingenious and that make them seem a lot smarter then they actually are.
This is not a black or white issue.
Why is the market changing right now? Why does a guy like Chris Roberts, making a sandbox space sim MMO, have almost $25 Million in crowd funding and climbing rapidly? What about all the other crowd funded sandbox games? Why are theme park games now starting to add some sandbox features? Why does EverQuest Landmark exist?
I'm not making a mistake at all. There will always be room for simple theme park games, they are a great entry level and casual way to enjoy the genre. However, it is also true that many people who play theme parks eventually get bored with them and want more, such as a virtual world, rather than virtual Disneyland. I've seen many die hard theme park lovers on this very site change their minds and start complaining about the repetitiveness in the MMO market. Those of us who already had access to better, deeper games have never been satisfied with theme parks, and saw this evolution as an inevitability. I've been talking about it here for the last six years.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
That's not really it either.
AI is indeed a lot more advanced than most people realize. However, (and this has been talked about quite a lot @ GDC converences and such) most games deliberately choose to not include complex AI. Why? Because most gamers don't actually want that. It's 'too hard', requires too much effort, is not 'fun enough'. It's for the same reason we have such dumbed down game mechanics. That's what sells, because that's what the majority of gamers want. And it's also a lot cheaper to develope, so why wouldn't studios go that route.
We have the occasional fiasco (like rome total war 2), and we also have some cases where AI programming has gets confused by 3d elements. However, even those types of situations are becoming much less common.
I don't want to play the old games. I have a life.
There is quite a bit of depth in some modern games, if you're willing to slow down and look for it.
Whenever I hear this "argument", my first thought is, "MMOs aren't shallow. MMO players are."
Sorry about your lack of creativity and inability to make your own fun.
Learning becomes more difficult as one gets older and as a result people may stick with tried and true as they get on in age, which is what people tend to misinterpret as the older one gets the more they resist change.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
The A and B parts fit perfectly to DAoC... irony?
My computer is better than yours.