GoKawiilYou know what I discovered at some point during the past 10 years? Gaming anxiety is a thing.
I'd spend hours scrolling through my Steam library, palms sweaty and heart palpitating, looking for something to even just launch and never finding it. I only wanted to have some fun — and the fruitless searching ratcheted up the anxiety. I'm completely noncompetitive and don't care if I even make it through a tutorial, so it wasn't performance anxiety.
I eventually broke through, completely accidentally, by changing the types of games I played. I stopped searching for the genres I played only on the PC, with a keyboard and mouse, and opened up to games I could play with a controller.
My longest sessions are now on my handheld consoles, phones and tablets, because as I get older, sitting at my desk for long periods has become uncomfortable. A controller doesn't tether me to a PC or require a flat surface, so I can sit anywhere — usually someplace squishy and comfy.
Aging changes almost every aspect of our physiology and psychology: vision, hearing, motor control, muscle weakness, cognition, memory and stamina. Issues that had been minor can become real roadblocks to your movement, reaction times and physical capabilities.
I haven't completely given up PC gaming, but I enjoy it a lot less now that I've got a twitchy forefinger and shaky hands, which leads to accidental double-clicks, inability to place the cursor exactly where I need it and having to strike a key more than once. Throw in vision degradation, constant tinnitus and muscle weakness, plus anxiety. As you age, you can develop new phobias and anxieties, which can be a problem for gaming.
"There are changes in mobility, dexterity, eyesight and hearing," says Niall White, principal gaming design and innovation engineer at gear-maker Logitech G (and 52-year-old Civilization 7 player), speaking to me about aging gamers. "It's also a constant change, so the solution needs to change as you go. While accessibility in gaming has improved a lot, I would say aging is not often a major consideration."
I've seen this firsthand: My father built his own PCs for 25 years, but by his mid-80s, he couldn't remember how to turn one on.
Aging doesn't affect everyone in the same way. Gaming streamer GrndPaGaming is in his 70s and has multiple health issues, but millions of followers, and damned if he isn't still a terrific sniper. And sniping is hard: It requires steady hands, good vision and mental acuity.
According to a 2025 report from the Entertainment Software Association, aging populations are still gaming a lot. More than half of Gen X, almost half of Boomers and more than 1 in 3 of the Silent Generation (aged 80 and up) play weekly. Couple that with AARP research (PDF) showing roughly 66% of gamers have reported experiencing at least one symptom of age-related decline in mobility, vision or cognition, and that's a sizable number of people dealing with these issues.
... continue reading