Beyond the Silver Gamer - The Compromises and Strategies of Older Video Game Players

Aug 26, 2026

Older adults’ experiences with video games highlight contemporary tensions in ageing and reveal the strategies older players develop to navigate them. Ethnographic research in a French cultural centre examines a video game workshop for 15 women aged 60–82 years, focusing on how they exercise agency as technogenarians. Participants manage conflicting expectations about who qualifies as a player and what counts as acceptable play. Through assembled discursive resources, they reclaim the right to subvert expectations and, finally, play on their own terms.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages26

Reading Time1 h 6 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction: Technogenarians and Video Games

Media narratives and the “silver gamer” frame

Technology, ageing contradictions, and identity effects

Study design: ethnography of the video game workshop

Negotiating discourses on play: dangers, gender, and instrumental value

International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 2022 15(2): 155–179. The Author doi: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3530 Beyond the silver gamer: The compromisesand strategies of older video game players By GaBrielle lavenir * Abstract The experience of older adults who play video games illustrates the contemporary challenges of ageing and the strategies that ageing individuals set up to navigate them. The ethnography of a video game workshop dedicated to older adults in a French cultural centre offers an opportunity to examine how a group of 15 women aged 60–82 years exert their agency as technogenarians (Joyce & Loe 2011). In order to fully engage in their play, the workshop’s participants have to manage complex and sometimes contradictory expectations concerning who counts as a player and what isan acceptable way to play. They cobble together available discursive resources to manoeuvre around notions that interfere with their practice. The result is a distinctive play style through which the participants reclaim a right to subvert expectations and, at long last, play. Keywords: technogenarians, silver gamers, successful ageing, videogames, ICT, play. *Gabrielle Lavenir, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada 155 International Journal of Ageing and Later Life Introduction: Technogenarians and Video Games “Alien-killer seniors!,”“At seventy, they discover video games: ‘Down! Jump! Come on, jump!’,”“Video Games: Retired people say Wii!”: over the past decade, pun-heavy headlines about “silver gamers” have proliferated in the French media. They echo the growing interest of medical professionals, policymakers and industry players for older adults who play video games. In that coverage, the prevailing perspective frames older adults’ play as a strategy to combat age-related health issues. In line with the scientific literature on older adults and video games, the media coverage of “silver gamers” portrays older adults “as a particular vulnerable group whom society should try to maintain through the use of technology in order to keep the costs of medical treatment and care down”(Iversen 2014: 6) . The situation of older adults who play video games illustrates the contemporary challenges and contradictions of ageing. It sheds light not only on the injunction to active, healthy and successful ageing but also on older adults’ complex and rich relationship with technology. From landline phones and walking aids to brain training games and home automation systems, technological devices shape the experience of ageing: they assign a certain identity (old, frail, in need of supervision) to individuals, they facilitate surveillance and external intervention and they restrict the scope of possible actions and interactions (Domínguez-Rué & Nierling 2016; Katz 1996). However, older adults do not merely endure technology: as technogenarians,“[e]lders creatively utilise technological artefacts to make them more suitable for their needs even in the face of technological design and availability constraints”(Joyce & Loe 2011: 1). The study of a video game workshop dedicated to older adults in a French cultural centre constitutes an opportunity to examine how a group of 15 women aged 60–82 years exert their agency in this context. Using ethnographic data collected during the 2014–2015 season of the workshop, including overt and non-participant observation of the 15 participants and semi-directive, biographical interviews with 9 participants, this article explores how older adults negotiate their relationship with videogames in order to manage age-related expectations and representations. The present article argues that playing video games in old age is challenging because older individuals cannot comfortably inhabit the 156 Beyond the silver gamer category of “gamer.” Indeed, different sets of discourses on ageing and video games are at odds: successful ageing intersects with t

FAQs

What does the study explore about older video game players?

It examines how older adults in a workshop negotiate their relationship with videogames to manage age-related expectations and representations.

Why do workshop participants experience conflicting expectations about playing video games?

Different discourses on ageing and video games conflict—successful ageing and techno-optimism clash with views of old age as decline and with moral panics about new media.

How do participants respond to limitations placed on their practice?

They compromise with ideas that games may be dangerous or inappropriate or should be instrumental, devising their own ways of playing and talking about video games that remain acceptable and enjoyable.

Aug 26, 2026

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