this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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I don't play multiplayer games anymore.
First off, they always seem to enable the worst of game companies trying to financially ruin their players.
Second off, I'm in my 40s and my reaction time isn't what it was when I used to play UT or Quake. You can't improve an aged reaction time nearly as easily, yes, because it's gotten slightly worse with age, but also because you become less willing and / or able to dedicate the sheer volume of time that you would need to to improve. Getting repeatedly stomped isn't fun, and quite simply, I've got better and more important things to do.
Third off, I don't like the constant recycling of content that you see in multiplayer games. A handful of maps are expected to last you infinite plays. I like changes of scenery, storylines, and varied experiences. Doing the same thing over and over again is just boring.
Fourth off, player communities in some games are aggressively dogshit and I really don't want to interact with them at all.
Twitch reaction time isn't particularly important in most games. Quake and UT, sure, but even in those most twitchiest of shooters strategy will still carry you into the upper echelons of players.
Counterstrike is almost entirely based on spray control and map knowledge. Twitch reactions have only a minor role to play.
Even games like Starcraft are determined primarily by strategy and not mechanical speed. You could probably play at a professional level before a lack of speed compared to your peers would actually begin holding you back.
Plus... you can train reaction time and multitasking. An actual physical impairment like RSI might stop you, though.
The whole "ohhh I can't do games because I have the olds" is such a nonsense cop-out. The rest of your post is pretty accurate, though.
It's unlikely your reaction time has changed much in your 40s. You probably have well over a decade before that starts to happen. On your first couple of tries, reacting to something is going to seem impossible. After you've seen the same stimuli and practiced what you should do in response, you'll be right around where teens and 20-somethings are. If you don't want to put the time in to make that happen, that's fine, but don't think it's unattainable to get good at a given multiplayer if you were otherwise interested in doing so. E-sports are now old enough that we've seen enough folks age into their 40s and remain top talent, as long as that remained an ideal career choice for them when so few are going to be able to support themselves in that career.
This also applies for some single-player games as well. I'm 48 and I had to "git gud" on Expedition 33 in order to progress - learning how to time parries is pretty critical for getting through the tougher fights.
In my own experience, now in my 50s and having played games since my teens, including a long period of RPGs and FPS online, reaction times start dropping in your 30s.
It's a tiny bit and you only really notice it when you're operating near your limits (same for intelligence, by the way - if you're using it near capacity, you'll notice that your capabilities start falling at around your mid 20s).
However, you can compensate it with experience, smarts and even wisdom - for example in FPS games you use the environment against other players, lead them into doing something predicable and get them then and/or prefer play styles that don't depend on reaction speed.
(IMHO, the world top people at for example sports, are the ones who already early in their careers combine top physicallity with experience, smarts and wisdom)
It's just a fact of life that physical and mental capacities do decay with age and far earlier than you seem to think, and whilst if you keep on using them it's not that much, if you're using them at a near peak-level it's noticeable if you pay attention as you can't just reach the peaks you could reach before.
The overwhelming majority of competitive games, across any genre, are determined predominantly via knowledge and skill rather than raw mechanical speed until the very highest level of play. Players who dedicate themselves to laddering will not get filtered by lack of mechanical speed until they're already among the very best in the game.
Games that would be determined primarily by speed would become very boring to watch after the first few rounds. So developers generally don't design games around it.
And in my experience, having gotten into fighting games in a serious way for the first time at age 30 (I'm now 37), people tend to attribute atypical "good reaction times" to what are actually smart input buffering techniques. In a crowd populated by mostly 20-somethings, I still routinely end up in the top 15% in a given game, and those opponents that beat me never feel like the difference was reaction time. Going from memory from a link I'll surely never be able to find again, so take this with a grain of salt, the US Air Force had a vested interest in studying how reaction times change as we age and found that it didn't really start to decay in any meaningful way until long after 40.
I'm 50 and it's started getting noticeable in the last year or two.
Watching NakeyJakey’s video on competitive shooters put into perspective how hard it really is. I knew I wasn’t cut out for it, but that just demonstrated how not cut out for it I was.
Link please?
Probably this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbJIbdcLn6M
I used to have 50ms reaction time 15+ years ago as a teenager. Now I have 300ms reaction time according to the previously linked test. I'm not sure if it's age or laziness though. I really really wanted to beat Zombie Goku back then and actually trained hard for it
That's also a factor in the gameplay itself.
Competitive multiplayer games will always develop a 'meta' that you have to adhere to or respond to in order to be at all competitive.
In single player games, you can make a replay interesting by playing it a different way, trying different strategies even if they're non-optimal, just to have the novel experience of playing the game a different way. Things like, "I think I'm going to try doing a no-vehicles run in Subnautica." or "I think I'll try Cyberpunk with a melee-focused solo build this time." But stuff like that just isn't viable in competitive multiplayer. You will be defeated early and often if you stray too far from the meta.
So not only are you playing the same few maps over and over, you're playing the same few tactics and strategies over and over, making things boring from that angle as well.
Being a meta slave is a mindset, not often reality. There are countless examples of players taking "useless" characters or builds far in the professional scene across many different genres and games.
In single player games you can also cheat a little,bug abuse and glitch the game for giggles without ruining the exp for others too
THIS. 1000% THIS!
I've been having so much fun lately using shit like this to add a little spice to the games I've been playing.
Now, I'm a complete sucker for overpowered MC energy in any media I consume. So it makes sense that getting to personally act out that power fantasy appeals to me. As with most art/entertainment, not everyone will get the same enjoyment out of doing this that I do. But that's ok! It's why I love single player games, those that want to have the vanilla experience and work within the rules can, and those that want to cheese the system and goof around can too, and no one is worse off for it!
I'm 32. I just recently started getting better aim than I ever had throughout my entire 20's. When it comes to gaming, age doesn't really matter as much.
Well, I'm in my 50s and the previous poster is totally right about reaction speed - there comes a point were your aim is as good as it gets, but so is the aim of the kids doing the same FPS 10h/day and they're faster than you.
That said, with age comes experience (well, can come, if you're trying - plenty of people age but don't learn) so you can beat the kids with smarts and wisdom (things like leading them into situations which are traps, using the environment in your favor and, more generally, just playing in ways were your reaction speed doesn't matter).
That said, I've been out of the FPS genre for a decade now. Like the previous poster I simply don't get enough fun from a game if it's low complexity, which tends to be the case for fast paced games that require fast and/or precise moves.
Oh. It's clear you haven't played multiplayer games for a long time, otherwise this false statement would not have come up:
Maps rotate constantly and change, active and passive maps, community maps.
Oh I obviously understand that there are multiple (if not dozens of) maps, but how many times are you expected to play those maps over and over again? Without plot progression, I just don't find it interesting.
The problem isn't the maps being static and finite, it's that nobody designs maps for emergent and dynamic gameplay anymore. CoD might have dozens of maps but they're all designed for perfect sterile balance with the same lane concepts.
Some of my favorite multiplayer games have only 3-4 maps but each is distinct and plays well to different tactics. Usually they're based around strong points and webs of approach which gives more options for fresh experience each time you play ("wow never noticed that flank" - "oh this window gives a great angle over this courtyard" - "oh a grenade can be thrown just perfectly over that building" - etc...)
In a sense, good progression isn't flat mechanical unlocks but building up game and map knowledge. You can choose to explore different facets of the game and it always stays interesting. Competitive ranked multiplayer ruined this because going off meta means losing the game for your team.
Especially when there's map voting. Fuck that.
Believe it or not, another 2fort \ mirage