Video Game Fun for All
By Ken Rossman

When one thinks of the term “video games,” what comes to mind are teenagers gobbling up the latest releases, spending hours at a time on the couch gaming through an adventure, and making new “friends” as a result of the hugely addictive craze that is online gaming. College students are no less identified with this phenomenon. But what about those over 50?

For the longest time, the average person could count on one hand the number of seniors who spend any portion of their leisure time playing video games. But not anymore. There is a growing market for video-based games fitting for older adults, and the public’s awareness and adoption of the games is growing at a record pace.

The Entertainment Software Association estimates that 25 percent of U.S. gamers are ages 50 and older. For a more specific example, there’s the case of Barbara Sainte-Hilaire, a 70-year-old correspondent for MTV and star of the blog, “Old Grandma Hardcore.”  She admits, without shame, that she indulges in video games about 10 hours per day.

Wii Can All Play Together
In November of 2006, Nintendo unleashed its newest creation — a console system called the Wii. Unlike virtually every other system of its ilk, this one does not operate with your standard two-handed controller featuring nearly a dozen buttons to memorize. Nintendo employed a shift in philosophy by using motion control, intending to make games much easier to pick up and play. And what a success it is!

The system comes packaged with a game called “Wii Sports,” which enables you and up to three friends to play motion-detection-based versions of tennis, golf, bowling, baseball, and boxing. The controller is a simple rectangular shape, about the size of your average TV remote control, but with far, far fewer buttons to remember. With it, these five sports games are made easy.

Take bowling, for example. You simply hold the remote in your hand like a bowling ball, hold down the “B” button (it’s like a trigger on the underside of the device), pull your arm back, and release the “B” button during your throwing motion to roll the ball. Putting spin on the ball is as simple as turning your wrist, just like real bowling!

Flora Dierbach, 72, chairs the entertainment committee at an Erickson Retirement Communities in Chicago and helped arrange a Wii bowling tournament — the latest Wii craze.

“It’s a very social thing and it’s good exercise... and you don’t have to throw a 16-pound bowling ball to get results,” Dierbach told Reuters News, who added the competition had people who hardly knew each other cheering and hugging in the span of a few hours.

Others, like Tennis, require no button-pressing whatsoever. Simply swinging the remote like a racquet at the right time is all that is required.

Because of its ease of use, the system has grown popular in senior centers where Wii bowling tournaments are becoming a frequent pastime. NBC news ran a feature story in April about seniors playing Wii Bowling (among other games) in a retirement home in Chicago. Why is it gaining in popularity? It’s easy, it’s a great opportunity to socialize and it allows people to have fun together.

To play the Wii system, one must buy the console from a local or online store. It assembles relatively easily with any television that contains RCA jacks (those little red, white, and yellow plugs in the back of the TV), and costs around $200. The system comes packaged with Wii Sports, and extra controllers sell for around $30 each.

Online for Fun
If you’re more of a “computer” person than a “television” person you can enjoy video games just as readily as the next person over the Internet.

Baby Boomers are slowly but surely starting to embrace the online medium as a way of not only obtaining valuable information, but playing games and socializing. One of the largest and most popular examples is www.pogo.com, an online gaming community highlighted by a plethora of creative games designed to entertain anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of how to operate a keyboard and mouse.

Most of pogo.com’s games are free and only require setting up a user name and password, while some are available only for those willing to pay a small fee of $5.99 per month to join the “Pogo Club.” Mercifully, Pogo Club lets you play all the games you want without annoying pop-up ads.

By far the most popular game on pogo.com is Poppit, a balloon-popping game where the player navigates through a Tetris-like puzzle by popping like-colored balloons that are right next to each other. The game ends when there are no longer any like-colored balloons touching (you can’t pop a single balloon all by itself).

Any time a user logs on to pogo.com, they will probably find over 19,000 other users playing this game alone. Unquestionably, a portion of these many thousands of gamers are seniors.

The game itself is half the fun. Like many online video games, the other half lies within interacting with other people all across the world, whether in chat rooms or enjoying friendly games of Poppit, Stack ‘Em, or Bejeweled.

Unlike Wii, pogo.com doesn’t require buying additional hardware and connecting it to a television. If you have a computer and an internet connection, you’ve got everything you need to play online computer games.

Many board games have been touted as “for all ages.” That moniker is literally true of an increasing number of video games nowadays. Whether you’re playing for amusement or using them to keep your brain more active, there’s great fun in trying them. Go for it and beat the kids at their own game.

Ken Rossman is a Maryland based writer and avid gamer who recently introduced his grandmother, aunt and parents — successfully — to the wonders of Wii sports.