Video Games Conquer The Elderly

bedake writes "The New York Times has up an article discussing the increase in retired people getting interested in online computer games. 'PopCap Games in Seattle, the maker of the diversions so popular at St. Mary, says its games have been downloaded more than 200 million times since the company was founded in 2000. A spokesman said that the company was stunned by results of a customer survey last year: 71 percent of its players were older than 40, 47 percent were older than 50, and 76 percent of PopCap players were women.' The piece goes on to discuss the popularity of the Wii console, as well, a subject discussed on Slashdot before."

Quote in summary is bad.

[Southpaw018]

Since when is 40 "elderly?" There are lots of people of retirement age who play games like those made by PopCap and who play on pogo.com and like sites. In fact, the article focuses mainly on people who are over 60.

Yet the quote for the article summary is a survey done on age brackets at 40 and 50 - hardly people who could be called "elderly".

Survey Respondents

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Youth and young adults don't take surveys. Old people with too much free time do. Read into this as you will.

Old news

[vandelais]

Elderly people have been playing networked games for several years now.
They even travel great distances to play.
The places that host these games are called casinos. They have addictive gameplay, and are networked together to the extent of determining the maximum jackpot awarded.