One of Shoot the Moon’s primary goals is to connect people of all ages through tabletop gaming. May is Older Americans month, so we’re kicking off our very first blog post with an article on older gamers who are frequently subject to bias in the gaming industry.
First of all, what is an “older gamer”?
Let’s start with “gamer”. We’re talking about people who play tabletop games, which is Shoot the Moon’s focus: board games, card games, role playing games, miniatures, etc. (not video games).
“Older” is a relative word. Older than what? In this case, we’re talking about anyone that is older than the demographic that most tabletop games are being marketed to, so age 50+.
Why pay special attention to this group?
There are a lot of demographics that are underrepresented or misrepresented in the gaming industry, and older people are one of them. But we know that playing games is a fantastic way to learn, connect with others, as well as have fun and there shouldn’t be an age limit on that.
Plus, if you love games and have the good fortune to stay alive, you will eventually be an older gamer (if you aren’t already). So we’re talking about you!
The problem
This article is inspired by a well-meaning but misguided attempt to make games for older people, which is a good example of larger problems in the industry.
Recently, a company called Ageless Innovations collaborated with Hasbro to “reimagine” a set of classic games in a series called Joy for All. The intention was to make it easier for people of all ages to play together. Good idea! But, unfortunately, the execution missed the mark.
The resulting games reinforce stereotypes about aging and miss an opportunity to produce a big-name example of how game designers can be more thoughtful about accessibility.
Joy for who?
The games in the Joy for All series include Taboo, Trivial Pursuit, and The Game of Life. We’ll briefly walk through each of them and explain why these made us cringe.
Taboo Charades
The first thing that stands out about Taboo Charades is the box design. They added glasses to the Taboo face logo because…you know…old people wear glasses. Come on, y’all! This is a totally unnecessary change rooted in a stereotype about how older people look.
Maybe they just wanted to distinguish the box because it has large print cards? Here’s the thing. Readable cards are great for everyone and shouldn’t be coded as “for old people”. Many games would benefit from designing cards and other components with a larger font size, more spacing between letters, or using a sans serif font. This helps gamers who are visually impaired, but it’s also just providing a better user experience for everyone. And it’s not just font size we should be thinking about, but colors, busy backgrounds, and symbology too.
Framing this as an aging issue makes it seem like readability is only necessary for special games made for older adults, like the ones in this series, rather than a best practice that we should be pushing for in all games.
Trivial Pursuit Generations
This version of Trivial Pursuit has the same trivia categories as the original game, but on every card there are questions that are meant to be relevant to different generations: Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. The idea is that people of different ages will be familiar with information from different time periods, so separating it out like this evens the playing field.
The weird thing about this is that it implies we all retreat from society at some point in our 30’s and don’t absorb any new popular culture or news after that. Why would Baby Boomers only know information from the 1960’s and 70’s when they are living in the world today, too? The idea that we stop participating in society at a certain age or only care about things from when we were young suggests that older people don’t have capacity or interest in learning new things, which just isn’t true.
This stereotype permeates our culture and impacts the way older people are expected to participate in gaming. Over and over again we see programs and events that involve tabletop gaming trying to engage older people by offering older games. Some older games are great! But, there are incredibly talented and creative people developing new fun games all the time, and we’re doing older people a disservice by assuming they won’t be interested in them.
The Game of Life (Generations)
Speaking of games based on generations, in this new version of The Game of Life you get to choose which generation you want to play and your progress through the game is impacted by that choice. Unsurprisingly, this leads to some egregious stereotypes.
If you play Gen Z, you can get a “Delay Life” card where on payday, older generations with a college degree have to hand you money. If you play the Greatest Generation, your special power is having babies. Guys, it’s bad!
Generational cut offs are pretty arbitrary, but we see these groups used everywhere to make sweeping generalizations about people, including in a growing number of games. The problem is, segmenting players in a game based on generation sews a division that we’re already primed to feel based on the messages we absorb every day in media and marketing. Even if it’s in jest, it’s still reinforcing these messages.
Okay, how do we fix it?
That’s what we’re here to do! Our mission is to bring people of all ages together through gaming and we know that means we need to advocate for inclusivity across the industry. We’re starting by trying to raise awareness on these issues, but we won’t stop there.
We’ll be publishing more articles here with ideas and updates on our progress, so stay tuned!
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