2old2play feature article in the Wall Street Journal

Congrats guys!!!

When Thomas Abel gets home from a stressful day at work, the 43-year-old airplane mechanic likes to let off steam by playing videogames. But he doesn't like to play against kids. He says they spout mom jokes and infantile nonsense during online matches on Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT -0.04% Xbox 360 system, which allows players to form teams and battle one another over the Internet. So Mr. Abel retreats to a safe haven where he knows he can find suitably mature joystick companions: a website he helped found called Geezergamers.com, where players meet on forums with names like "Get off my lawn."

Enlarge Image

Lesley Atkinson

 

Ralph Atkinson, a 77-year-old retired butcher from Melbourne, Australia, plays under the alias Claw.  "You get these 12-year-old kids swearing and being obnoxious online," says Mr. Abel, a father of two from Detroit. "You wonder where their parents are." Communities of graying gamers have sprouted up world-wide as generations reared on Pong and Pac-Man have become addicted to the latest iterations of Halo and Call of Duty, but are no longer as fast with their trigger fingers. So they are extending their playing days in virtual versions of the senior leagues.

Mature gamers meet up on websites with names such as 2old2play.com, which are typically supported by donations and advertising, because they prefer to play with people of a certain age. But occasionally, senior teams also test their mettle against the hordes of young guns on public Internet servers—even if it ends badly. Mr. Abel says he is still stinging from an especially harsh beat-down at the hands of "some 12-year-old girls from Japan" in a giant-robot game called Chromehounds. "It seems these kids today are pretty much living on Xbox," he offers by way of excuse. "I have to work and spend time with my family." Yet the oldsters sometimes prevail, thanks to seasoned marksmen like Ralph Atkinson, a 77-year-old retired butcher from Melbourne, Australia, who fulfilled his national military service obligation more than a half century ago.

Part of an online society called The Older Gamers that has 57,000 members world-wide, he shreds competitors in the online shooting game Battlefield 3 under the alias Claw—a reference to the signature move of a 1950s-era pro wrestler, Killer Kowalski.  "When I win I let them know: You just got your butt kicked by a pensioner," says Mr. Atkinson, who used to play with his son but laments that "he's in business, he's gotten too busy."

Older gamers say their subculture reflects the evolution of videogames from child's play to mainstream hobby. The average age of U.S. game players is now 30, according to the Entertainment Software Association, and the average age of frequent game buyers is 35.

"There is still a stigma associated with this pastime," says Stefaan de Keersmaeker, a 41-year-old information-technology expert from Melbourne, who founded The Older Gamers because he "got fed up with all the juvenile behavior" from younger players online. "It is very hard to explain to some people, but it's not all kid's play anymore."

Many of the more mature groups include actual clans: organized players who regularly meet up at set times and take competition seriously. But most are casual forums for police officers and lawyers to show they've still got game. The groups also provide a setting where they can wax nostalgic about the heroic feats of their youth, say, beating the Mother Brain monster at the end of the original 1980s Nintendo7974.OK -1.48% game Metroid—with someone who understands what they are talking about.

A commonly held belief among older gamers is that videogames are less challenging than in the old days, when the games took months to complete. Players had to map out their progress in virtual worlds on sheets of graph paper, or write down lengthy passwords to save games.

"Kids today have it easy," says Joel Albert, a 33-year-old web developer from Chicago who co-founded 2old2play.com seven years ago. "It was definitely tougher for our generation."

The 2old2play community, whose minimum age is 25, says it carefully screens applicants for "squeaky voices" and other telltale signs of adolescence. It has helped adult gamers find friendship and, in a few cases, love. The other founder of 2old2play.com, Derek Nolan, a 39-year-old software programmer from Massachusetts, is now engaged to the site's editor, Tiffany Fary.  She helps line up reviews of whether new games are appropriate for children as well as parents, and pens editorials on sensitive topics, such as coping with the awkwardness of being the old dude at the midnight launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops II.  The couple met at a convention where she was representing a group of women gamers who call themselves the PMS Clan. They bonded over their love of Halo, which pits a tough-guy space soldier against hordes of aliens. Now they have four children from their prior relationships—and five Xboxes in their home.  "She is as much of a Halo gamer as I am, which goes against the stereotype for the women gamers," Mr. Nolan says with pride. "We have commonalities."

Halo, an FPS (or first-person shooter) game, "played a huge role in our courtship," Ms. Fary agrees. "In 2old2play, you find people who also have husbands and children, and who understand you can no longer stay up all night playing an FPS because you have to work the next morning."

The 2old2play crew likes to boast it can still hang tough in online competition against younger folks. But its players have learned that there are limitations to what they can accomplish.

Some of the group's top guns tried their hand at Major League Gaming, a North American professional videogame league, where elite players compete in tournaments for tens of thousands of dollars in prize money. The results were humiliating.

"We kind of got our a— kicked" in Halo 2 by teenage players, Mr. Nolan admits. The denizens of 2old2play, he says, plan to stick to the amateur circuit from now on.

Write to Miguel Bustillo at miguel.bustillo@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared February 19, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: These Videogame Sites Are for 'Mature' Audiences Only