I was having an argument with my friend over which age group of gamer was the best.  He was saying the older the better because they've experienced so many more gens than younger gamers.  

But I countered that with,  if you're 50,  you might only have 5 more gens of gaming left where as I'm in my twenties and I've a hell of a lot more.  I don't think you can argue with that.  

You may be 50 but I've more years of gaming left,  unless you plan on being the first 130 year old human! 

Edit: apologies to any old fogies this makes sad :'(

Well one way younger players are better is in terms of reaction times.

I've see the odd older gamer on forums talking about how they sometimes have to play on an easier difficulty than they used to. Hopefully that doesn't happen as young as 50.

Games today are garbage, even if you had an infinite amount you'd still lose. :D

Most games today have the difficulty that learning games for kids had in the 80s...

I'm in my 20s, but I think my situation applies to most older audiences as well (if not more), and that is older gamers simply do not have as much time as younger people and don't feel like hurdling through a hard game if they just have a limited amount of time. Like, if I play a that's hard and haven't even gotten past the first level because I was playing on hard, I'd feel pretty frustrated because I don't feel like I've done any significant progress. Nowadays I'd rather have a quick and awesome feeling of empowerment than one where I constantly have to try and try again. 

That logic would also apply to yourself though when you reach 50 as those much younger than you by then will have plenty of decades left of gaming and have much faster reflexes than you do, the same way it's been going with Humanity since the beginning. Heck you won't be around here in 100-200 years whereas there will definitely be people around that have more years than you as time goes on.

I'm nearly 30 and I do know that I'm not as twitchy as I used to be with games, that and the difficulty levels of some games these days has been made adjustable while games back in the old days didn't always sport multiple difficulties. I'm more for take at your pace type games than ones that want you to finish as quick as possible, gone are the days where I desired to get everything under the known sun within the game or wanting to spend time doing all sorts of challenges, now I just don't care for them because I would rather enjoy the scenery, characters, story and gameplay than hardcore twitch challenges. 

Gamers in their 30s are still the luckiest. They've been around since before or at the beginning of the NES. They've effectively gotten to experience every worthwhile generation to its fullest, without sacrificing much of the time left that people in their 20s have.

Good balance.

I'm 36 and I'm better and faster than I was at 21, so I don't think you're problem is age. It probably has more to do with time spent gaming or something else.

As far as the OP goes, most 30 somethings are better than 20 year olds because when we were young, we only had NES to play. This meant, most of the time, 3 lives, no continues... fuck you... game over. We HAD to develop lazer quick reflexes to get through games back then. Those skills, for the most part, are dead. Games are easier... WAY easier. Bloodbourne is nothing compared to beating some of those NES games without cheats.

But the numero uno thing that puts 30 something gamers over the top is not our reflexes, it's our resiliency. Again, because our games were so hard, we had to start over... and over... and over and over and over again to get better. You would get to level 7, die, and then your entire fucking game was lost. You had no options... you either toughen up, or walk away a failure... and failure was not an option. This is in stark contrast to most guys in their early 20's. Everything they've played has been a cake walk. They have grown up in an entitled world. If they can't beat something on a few tries, they quit and find something that doesn't present a challenge to the point of frustration. THAT'S why 30 something gamers>early 20 something gamers imo.

Obviously, I'm speaking in general terms. I don't think 35 year old gamers have better genes. If you took a kid now, age 8, and only gave him NES games to play, he'd grow up just as good or better than I am. But most don't play NES games like that. Most grow up with Minecraft so in 10 years, it's going to be even worse skills wise.

I'm not sure about this(I'm 30 btw), when I was playing the NES games back in the days(also this applies to PS1 games), I had to learn everything on my own, I've finished a lot of the games too, today, people have easy access to guides/walkthroughs through the internet which I didn't have at all(internet/game guides). Heck Ninja Gaiden alone took almost 2yrs just to finish, just because I stop games when it's really getting hard for me, then I play other games then go back to the games that was really hard for me to finish.

Edit: Skills / reaction time wise, I've gotten really better, heck the souls games/bloodborne really isn't a challenge for me anymore after a  couple of hours of playing(2hrs max), yet I gotta admit, I have to search for guides just for the secrets( I just don't like missing out on secrets :D).

I don't know, Legend of Zelda is a pretty fun series...