In praise of MMOs – or why older adults should play them

Before I talk about why you should play, I’ll start with some definitions:MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online [game]. When you play an MMO, your character – i.e. your avatar – exists in a permanent, digital ‘world’ online. He or she lives there along with thousands of other characters. Some of those characters are controlled by players, some are controlled by the game engine and are like extras in a movie.Most MMOs allow players to fight, explore, gather materials, craft items from those materials, buy and sell items, and chat to other players. I do all of those things.Most MMOs are designed to be both ‘Player vs environment’ [PVE], and ‘Player vs Player’ [PVP], with the player choosing which way to play, and when. This means that players who just want to explore, socialise, and build things can do so without having to worry about the PVP aspects of the game. I’ve done PVP in the past but hated it. Now I just play against the game engine. That said, I have a couple of older friends who still play PVP despite not having the reflexes of a 14 year old.Older adults can be anywhere from 40 to 90.

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you: 90. And I intend to be that 90 year old. I’m currently 70, and I have a gamer friend who’s 60, another who’s in his early 70’s and one who’s in her late 70’s. MMOs are no longer the province of pimply 14 year olds with hygiene issues.

So having established that older people can play, why on earth should they?

To answer that question I have to tell you about my Mum. She never learned to change any of the settings on the TV much less on a computer. As a result, the last two years of her life were spent inside, shuffling from her bed to the bathroom to the lounge where she would sit and wait anxiously for The Bold and The Beautiful. That was her life, and yet she was a gregarious woman who loved to talk to people.

I believe social isolation and a sense of hopelessness made Mum give up on life. Dad had health issues too, along with mild dementia, but he continued to do what he loved doing, almost to the very end. He lived to be 89. If not for a fall, I believe he would have made it to 90 easily.

Before the pandemic, I taught computer literacy in a retirement village. My best student was 92 and computers gave him a window on the world outside.

And last but not least, I recently watched a TV show about a program that brought older people in a retirement village together with a group of high school kids:

Prior to the program, many of the older adults confessed to feeling isolated, lonely and depressed. Re-engaging with the youngsters improved their outlook enormously.

I talk to young people via my game every day. One is only 19.

I know that many of you are incredibly creative people who are fully engaged in life and have no time for games, but…ill health can strike at any time. If it does, and if your world suddenly becomes smaller, why not give an MMO a try?

Things never feel quite so bad when we have something to look forward to.

-hugs-
Meeks

p.s. if you want to see some of my gaming related posts from the past, click on ‘Posts by categories’ and scroll down until you reach ‘Games for big kids’. Apparently I’ve talked about gaming a lot.