I hear that it’s a very busy time for videogamers now. So many great AAA games have been released. People don’t know where to start. Some may be creating intricate schedules to keep up.

Penny Arcade comic of 31 October.

Here’s my gaming schedule of the past, say, 5 years:

And it doesn’t look like it’s about to change.

It’s not that I don’t have time to play. Or money to spend. Or that I don’t want to play videogames. On the contrary. I’m aching for a game, I’m dying to play! But there hasn’t been anything on the market that appeals to me. For years.

Five years ago, I was having a great time. There was Silent Hill 2 and 3, Black and White, Ico, Fatal Frame. And also Grand Theft Auto III and Rez. I even had fun with Devil May Cry and Tekken and Soul Calibur. But since then, with the exception of Animal Crossing, nothing has been able to draw me in. And it’s not like I’m growing too old for gaming or something. Five years ago, I was already 35. Yeah, I’m one of those “adult gamers” that you hear about on the internets.

Except, not anymore, apparently.
I want a game. I have the cash. I’ll make the time. I’ll buy a new console and a new television set if necessary. Whatever it takes. Give me a game! Please?…

Silence.

Surely I’m not alone! Given that the majority of people on this planet continue to not play videogames. Despite even Nintendo’s recent efforts, there haven’t been very many videogames that appeal to us -or that can deliver on that appeal. And we do want to play.

The games industry seems to have more interest in squeezing yet another triple A action game into that tiny overpopulated market segment and carpet bombing us with advertising so we would pay attention. While at the same time, elsewhere on the market, there is a wide open field of opportunity, filled with people who actually want to play, who don’t need to be marketed to, who must be so desperate by now that they will play anything you throw at them if it’s in the least bit interesting to them.

Easy pickings, I would think. But nobody takes up the challenge. And I remain gameless.

This is something that came up on our Game Design Forum when discussing age ratings for games. A lot of players of The Endless Forest are fairly young. But they are still excited about our upcoming new horror game The Path. Which worries us a bit, since we don’t think The Path will be suitable for a young audience.

As a parent I find age ratings useful for helping me decide whether a game would be suitable for my children. I don’t interpret the rating as a prohibition but as a recommendation. A game with an age rating of 3+ would be interpreted as not suitable for my 12 year old son, for instance. Because it would probably be too childish.

But for myself, as an adult gamer, the age ratings are mostly useless. If I would apply the same logic to myself, then a game rated 18+ would be too childish for me (I’m 40). But that isn’t always the case. In fact “18+” is considered “mature” by the industry. As a result, I often end up being treated by a game in a way that I find completely condescending. More often than not, games -even those rated “18+”-, are designed implicitly with a juvenile audience in mind. As a middle aged gamer, I take offense at being treated like a child.

So I would propose to add a maximum age rating to the current rating system. Again, not in any prohibitive sense (not to make it illegal for the elderly to play games, e.g.) but as a recommendation. Something along the lines of “this game is recommended for people older than 12 and younger than 25” for instance. That would be a major help and would prevent a lot of hostility towards the games industry from older gamers like me.