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Do skills and reflexes actually deteriorate with age?

I

Imp the Dimp

Member
Are there any studies on this? Most people in esports are 16-25 at which age they oftentimes retire or vanish into obscurity. Is it because +25yo can't keep up with the up and comers or is it because people at that age just shift their priorites and are less dedicated on average?

Last week Fear, a 27 years old Dota player, won the tournament with highest price pool in esports history so I wonder if age is actually relevant when it comes to reflexes.

Is there something like a physical prime for players in competitive games?
 
S

Shuggananas

Banned
Well you don't suddenly become worse the day you turn 26 obviously
But yeah they do deteriorate. I guess energy kinda does too.

Carry is the easiest role anyway
 
K

KJRS_1993

Member
I think people drop out aged around twenty five or more simply because they don't want to keep playing video games for a living.
I honestly can't imagine it's the most enjoyable career.

I don't think it's anything to do with reflexes personally.
 
M

Magic Mushroom

Member
They do, but not all that fast I you keep training them.

Have you seen how fast some old piano players hit them keys? Just keep at it.

I'm 37 right now and I don't feel all that different playing games, either solo or competitive. The bigger difference is a lack of time.
 
Z

Zaptruder

Banned
Yes. Neurons degenerate over time, as do the reflexes that go along with them.

At top level competitive sports, the effect is significant, and can counteract the benefits of experience quite handily.
 
S

Sapphire Dreams

Member
One of my friends is one of the best Counter Strike players I've ever seen and won many local tournaments, and he is 34.

I guess it differs from person to person.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Fast motion tasks become diminished over time.

Long term strategic tasks become improved over time (correlated with experience)

Sure, you might decline in Street Fighter or DOTA or athletic sports... But you do gain strategic skills over time. It's not like younger people make the best directors, financial analysts, editors, music producers, etc.
 
M

Muchi Muchi Pink

Member
Yeah there is a famous interview with boxer. When he returned he said that he can't keep up with the younger in terms of speed anymore, but his experience make up for it.
 
B

Bleeether

Member
Yup, and this phenomena isn't exclusive to gaming.

You age hit your physical peak and then everything declines.... then u die.
 
M

mnz

Unconfirmed Member
Most of the best fighting game players have hit 30. A few years more and we'll See.
 
I

Imp the Dimp

Member
Muchi Muchi Pink said:
Yeah there is a famous interview with boxer. When he returned he said that he can't keep up with the younger in terms of speed anymore, but his experience make up for it.
Click to expand...

Boxers don't peak in their early twenties usually. Mayweather and a lot of others fight well into their thirties. I just wonder if games are less forgiving than real sports in that regard. Nobody is post prime at 25 in any physical sports.
 
D

Dremark

Banned
I don't know. I'm 34 and I'm better at games now than I ever was.

Daigo Umehara is about my age and he stills seems to be one of the top Street Fighter players.

It probably depends person to person though.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Imp the Dimp said:
Boxers don't peak in their early twenties usually. Mayweather and a lot of others fight well into their thirties. I just wonder if games are less forgiving than real sports in that regard. Nobody is post prime at 25 in any physical sports.
Click to expand...
I think you make a good point that the perception of e-sports being for young people would make it fall off faster than it should.

I can't imagine focusing on video games past adult age. And that irrational bias is what keeps there from being a pool of gamers pushing performance into adult ages.

e-sports is like 5 years into acceptance, at best.. Of course we aren't properly testing the age limit of the potential talent.
 
A

alcheim

Member
In my opinion, I think it has more to do with life priorities getting in the way of training and practice --at least in terms of dexterity.

For instance, when I was in my teens, I had no trouble clearing Expert/Challenge modes in Street Fighter Ex. At the present I can still clear some of USF4 trial modes, but there are just some that I couldn't do. I thought I was getting old, but I went back and replayed SF EX, and after some warm ups, I found that I could still clear the trial modes, even on a laggy HDMI connection.

...So I guess the muscle memory and skills are still there, but they need to be "warmed-up".

Alertness, and reflexes might be another matter though.
 
S

Shin Kojima

Banned
At almost 40 I definitely don't have the speed and reflexes anymore I did when playing games as a kid. I still try to challenge myself as much as possible but it kind of sucks.
 
M

Muchi Muchi Pink

Member
I think reflexes alone won't make you a good player. I mean it helps, but there is so much more to it. And I think the benefits of better reflexes show in more fast paced games. And I'm sure this doesn't step in after 25, but a lot later.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Imp the Dimp said:
That makes a lot of sense.
Click to expand...
Even as I say that, I think 5 years of e-sports acceptance is being very generous, outside of Korea and tiny pockets of the FCG.

Right now is ground zero of e-sports. We don't know anything yet.
 
L

lostinblue

Banned
Imp the Dimp said:
Are there any studies on this? Most people in esports are 16-25 at which age they oftentimes retire or vanish into obscurity. Is it because +25yo can't keep up with the up and comers or is it because people at that age just shift their priorites and are less dedicated on average?
Click to expand...
You only start losing reflexes at 40 or so.

Source is olympic athletes that competed until their twilight years, past 40 they have a lot of visual training not dissimilar to videogames, actually... This is to keep eye-coordination/reaction intact.


And skills don't necessarily deteriorate over time, you might get slower at mastering something new but you don't lose out at experience which tends to be valuable and even if you get slower in a game that's like playing with input lag you start being pre-emptive and thus it doesn't show as much, you know what's gonna happen and pressed a response in advance with the timing you needed to do so - I'm sure everybody relates. Anywho, both declines usually happen mainly as a byproduct of slowing methabolism, you get slower and so does your "refresh rate", this means you put up weight more easily and just generally slow down.

Playing games and being active is fighting that though.
 
C

Creaking

He touched the black heart of a mod
Arabian Mage said:
One of my friends is one of the best Counter Strike players I've ever seen and won many local tournaments, and he is 34.

I guess it differs from person to person.
Click to expand...

image.php
 
F

Filter

Member
Here's a study Titled:
Over the Hill at 24: Persistent Age-Related Cognitive-Motor Decline in Reaction Times in an Ecologically Valid Video Game Task Begins in Early Adulthood

image


The abstract:

"Typically studies of the effects of aging on cognitive-motor performance emphasize changes in elderly populations. Although some research is directly concerned with when age-related decline actually begins, studies are often based on relatively simple reaction time tasks, making it impossible to gauge the impact of experience in compensating for this decline in a real world task. The present study investigates age-related changes in cognitive motor performance through adolescence and adulthood in a complex real world task, the real-time strategy video game StarCraft 2. In this paper we analyze the influence of age on performance using a dataset of 3,305 players, aged 16-44, collected by Thompson, Blair, Chen & Henrey [1]. Using a piecewise regression analysis, we find that age-related slowing of within-game, self-initiated response times begins at 24 years of age. We find no evidence for the common belief expertise should attenuate domain-specific cognitive decline. Domain-specific response time declines appear to persist regardless of skill level. A second analysis of dual-task performance finds no evidence of a corresponding age-related decline. Finally, an exploratory analyses of other age-related differences suggests that older participants may have been compensating for a loss in response speed through the use of game mechanics that reduce cognitive load."

image


http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094215
 
N

Napoleonthechimp

Member
If you're talking physical sports then I can understand if people post-30 have difficulty because at that point they would have been redlining their body for a good while. But videogaming? That gets a big WTF from me.

In fact I remember reading a study that showed neural plasticity, reflexes, and all that stuff (at least as it relates to the brain) in elderly people can be made comparable to someone in their mid-20s if they put effort into simply reconditioning themselves over a period of time. Which leads me to believe it is a case of "if you don't use it you lose it".

But if your skills and reflexes drop off a proverbial cliff after 25 then you've got some serious issues that need to be addressed.

Also: I find that at 29 that I have gradually stopped giving a shit about video games to the point where I won't bother playing them. And like anything if you don't maintain something it'll gradually lessen. I imagine the fatigue over videogames is only heightened when you play them constantly at such a high level.
 
F

fresquito

Member
Of course they deteriorate. Whoever says otherwise is in denial. Now, just like in any other sport, there're a thousand more components to what makes someone good at something it other than raw reflexes.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
DryEyeRelief said:
That and the talent pool for pro gaming is smaller than pro sports.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. And that's part of what I'm implying. The pool for e-sports talent is peculiar. It's not the best of the best, it's the best of those who have invested into what is now considered a niche. That will hopefully change over time.
 
I

Iriscomeback

Member
Yes, but I remember reading somewhere that playing games when you are older slows this process down.

When the Wii was a thing they started putting them in retirement homes in my country, with spectacular results.
 
C

CouchMaster

Member
No, not unless you're like 55 something. And even then if you've been playing videogames all your life it won't make a big impact.
 
A

Ace001

Member
I'm sure other factors can over come it such as: experience, intelligence, anticipation etc

Reflexes are everything when it comes to games/sport
 
F

Filter

Member
This is a pretty straight forward question that is easily testable. There's a lot of evidence to support studies on this subject.

I guess most people would rather just give anecdotes that are in favour of whatever age bracket they fall into tho.
 
Patrick S.

Patrick S.

Banned
When I was younger, I was a gaming god. Now that I'm 37, my 7-year old kicks my ass in most games we play together.
 
I

impact

Banned
Definitely. Look at GeT_RiGhT, f0rest, markeloff, starix, Edward, NEo, MusambaN1, <insert 1.6 god here> now in CS:GO compared to CS. CS:GO is an easier game yet they're much worse, because there's crazy fast young bucks like kennyS, s1mple, shoxie, Happy, device, etc dominating the game.
 
N

Napoleonthechimp

Member
Filter said:
This is a pretty straight forward question that is easily testable. There's a lot of evidence to support studies on this subject.

I guess most people would rather just give anecdotes that are in favour of whatever age bracket they fall into tho.
Click to expand...

Of course reflexes (skills I will absolutely dispute) generally decline with age but the guy is talking about a specific age bracket in relation to a niche competition.

This isn't the god damn Olympics where people are red lining their bodies and accumulating years of injuries until the point comes where they can't compete anymore. It is a videogame competition where the only thing that moves are a competitor's fingers and eyeballs.

Of course people in the 16-25 age range will dominate those competitions: They've got copious amounts of spare time to condition themselves to become experts at their game of choice (and let's face it, it usually is just one game). People beyond that age usually have more pressing concerns and interests.
 
O

ohyouagain

Member
I thought it does until as recently as yesterday.
While I was playing New Super Mario Bros U, I started speedrunning levels out of boredom and realized that I was gracefully blazing through them thanks to a cocktail of gliding, mid-air spins, accurate triple jumps and finely timed fire balls.

I was back in the shoes of my 8 years old self. The sensation was fantastic.

So, while I still think skills might deteriorate with age, I start wondering if what most of us refers to as aging suckness would not be in fact caused by evolutions in design philosophy. Of course, another factor in play could be that we might not push ourselves as much as in situations in which it is regarded to be a skilfull player (typically at school).
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
It's all downhill from here. ;_;

But it's just like in other sports, if your physical is deteriorating, you have to make up for it with experience and mental fortitude.
 
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