Games today practically hold your hand and teach you plus the easy use of the net to help learn and finish games. Gamers today have it so much easier. There were no tutorial s for games like Zelda or Battle Toads etc. Or the net to even help you. Much better times in my opinion. These days anyone can finish any game. Back in the older days you knew who was good.

I mean us young'ins are getting more and more commercialized big budget generations, compared to a vastly smaller, more dedicated set of developers in the past. So the ones we get are more likely to be worse overall.

The counter side to that is we get all the old AND new, but most of my contemporaries don't care to or aren't good enough to try older games so that can be moot at times.

I wish i could look upon the future of gaming, but things are only getting worse and all in the name of greed.
We do still have a few treasures around and a few still coming, but the quantity of good games keeps getting shorter.
The Gaming 30 years ago weren't much better, i have Retro-friends and i often play with them. but that is a matter of opinion ofc.. But there were just as much rehash in games in the early 90s as it has once again happen after 2008

I just hope for a new revolution like what happen after Atari.

You try and beat Castlevania 2 today without cheats...

... that f**king whirlwind...

Ah but what you must remember about us oldies, is that we've had the golden ages of games, where I think in the next few years they are going to stagnate a bit until tech can get powerful enough to deliver the next level of gaming... and it could be a while. With games getting more expensive, they are starting to become a little too similar to each other (ubisoft games being a prime example)

So us oldies win :D

If the "world ends" in 20 or 30 years with one of the many doomsday scenarios, the 50 crowd had 30 years more fun gaming and 5 - 6 more generations than the 20 crowd. So the older guys win. ;)

Pretty much.

When you're young, all the way up through undergraduate studies, you have more leisure time for hobbies which is typically inversely proportional to the amount of frivolous money available to spend on gaming. 

Once you're working full time, assuming you're single, you have all the frivolous money you could want to spend on gaming, but far less leisure time to actually play. 

If you're in this boat, your free time is now more valuable than your frivolous money. That free time will be split between other obligations and hobbies outside of gaming. Only a dedicated minority can maintain the same number of hours per week as they could when they weren't working full time. 

In short, you don't have time for crappy games, grinding or replaying games ad nauseum to see every little thing or unlock every little achievement or trophy. Few games will merit breaking into double digit hours worth of play unless you're only playing single digit number of games per year. 

Im 31 and better now than ever, more experienced plus someone said early being in your 30's is the best time to grow up in, i was there part of Sega Mega Drive Vs Super Nintendo war where at school we had real fights, not this fanboy rubbish now!

Because 20 year old gamers apparently say things like "20 year olds are better than 50 year olds" before going to the playground to play boys Vs girls. *facepalm that breaks nose*

While it would make for an interesting sociological study to see the retention rates for gaming into middle ages with the average quoted gamer age being 31 years, my guess is that a not insignificant chunk of current 20 year old gamers won't be playing video games by the time they're 50.

Those who are currently pushing into their later middle age and still gaming probably represent a rapidly diminishing demographic for their age group.