Beyond the silver gamer: The compromises and strategies of older video game players
Beyond the silver gamer: The compromises and strategies of older video game players
By Gabrielle Lavenir
Abstract
“The experience of older adults who play video games illustrates the contemporary challenges of ageing and the strategies that ageing individuals set up to navigate them. The ethnography of a video game workshop dedicated to older adults in a French cultural centre offers an opportunity to examine how a group of 15 women aged 60–82 years exert their agency as technogenarians (Joyce &Loe 2011). In order to fully engage in their play, the workshop’s participants have to manage complex and sometimes contradictory expectations concerning who counts as a player and what is an acceptable way to play. They cobble together available discursive resources to manoeuvre around notions that interfere with their practice. The result is a distinctive play style through which the participants reclaim a right to subvert expectations and, at long last, play.”
Reference
Lavenir, G. (2022). Beyond the silver gamer: The compromises and strategies of older video game players. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 15(2), 155-179. doi:10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3530 https://ijal.se/article/view/3530
Keywords
Video games, strategies, older players, expectations, play, research