[15457345234]

I think a large element of it is that... these games were not necessarily intended for an adult audience.

I remember picking up Transport Tycoon on the coverdisc of some PC magazine. I was in grade school, it was fun. Lots of clicky intricate detail that a child's mind used to narrow horizons could obsess over and learn to minmax. When you came home from school and your world was the inside of your house a game like that seemed like the universe, you obsessed over it because _it's what there was._

Then you... grow up and go outside. Your world expands to a fantastically large size and you move on from small toys. There's just... so much more out there.

Sorry to put it so bluntly. (And I have this game installed and fire it up maybe once a year for a bit of nostalgia.)

[dragontamer]

The older generation always had railroad simulators, for the nerdier grandpas out there who really wanted to replicate the railroad signaling systems from the late 1800s or whatever age they were simulating. It just cost real $$$ 50 years ago, since each toy-train and toy-track would have had to have been actually made out of plastic.

OpenTTD is easier than that, but harder than most games. Its a better balance (less to learn) than hobby-railroad hobby... cheaper... but still with the complex paths and simulated traffic needed to build a game off of.

Its a toy. Plenty of old folks have toys, and IMO it seems like the healthier retired folks I know of are those who continue to play with toys into old age. It could be a selection bias thing, but you have to keep the mind active in the retirement years.

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It could be a weird generational gap thing, wherein older folks play with expensive toy sets (ex: lots and lots of rails) in their basements. But younger folk today would have a toy-like video game (like OpenTTD, Minecraft, etc. etc.) instead.

I don't think its appropriate to ever "grow out" of toys. I think that... maybe... you run out of time to play with toys during the busier stages of your life.

Unlike a "game" where there's a set purpose and therefore a set limit to the complexity... a "toy" game (Rollercoaster Tycoon, OpenTTD, Factorio, etc. etc.) are designed to instead have the players reach complexity levels above-and-beyond what the designers dreamed of.

[TillE]

Minecraft is a funny case, because in alpha and beta it was really big on Reddit, the audience was clearly people in their 20s and 30s. The YouTubers making videos about it were adults.

Some time after 1.0 it exploded in popularity, especially with younger kids, and it's now almost universally seen as a kids' game. But it's still the same game; if anything it's become more complex.

[15457345234]

> Minecraft is a funny case, because in alpha and beta it was really big on Reddit

Reddit in those days was a much smaller place than it is now and a lot of the users were functionally odd, a huge amount of the discussions revolved around 'how to behave in public' and 'how to navigate normal social interactions' and 'how to cope with social anxiety' - I'm not trying to judge because I was a user too, but the average reddit user around that time - and especially a reddit minecraft fan - could politely be described as a manchild.

And minecraft Youtube is still a very weird place.

[KiwiJohnno]

I'm 50 this year, and I've been playing Minecraft since beta 1.0 or so.

I recently started playing again, and boy has the game changed in the last 5 years or so. The caves and cliffs update made exploring wonderful.