I know guys well into their 60's who game some even game with their wives, some even met their wives through the games. What a lot of non gamer people and those who get validation from climbing the corporate ladder see is a time sink, that's it. They believe it's a childish past time and that if you have time to game you have time to do something "more" productive. They fail to see it for what it is, for most that is leisure time. Best part we are adults and get to decide what we spend our leisure time on! They fail to see that some play for the fantastic narratives that many games have or the community that there can be with social interactions. The last can have an incredible impact on older and retired people if they do venture into online games as they will get to talk with people and that can greatly improve their quality of life. Plus with finding like this here are great.

Even anecdotally through one of my friends experiences with his father who has been retired for a while and was doing ok until he started having mobility issues and required a hip replacement. This was a hard time for him and my friend noticed that the isolation caused from the lack of mobility even after two years, was starting to cause a cognitive decline in his dad along with more memory issues.

He finally convinced his dad after much cajoling to let him set him up a basic gaming PC and install steam and made a family discord server. Sold it as a way for him to spend time with his grand kids in different ways other than physically seeing them and it worked. They started with games like party animal, escape simulator, escape academy, Astroneer and other online board games like Life and Monopoly. Even after a year he saw a drastic improvement in his dad not only in mood but also in his memory and cognitive functions I can't remember what his dad did exactly but it was STEM based so the before and after was easily noticeable. After about 1- 1.5 years his dad branched out on his own and found satisfactory and started playing it with our telling my buddy, he only found out when he saw it pop up on his steam friends feed lol. Coming from a STEM background his dad loves it and wanted to figure it out so he could teach his grandsons how to play, which he does now with the eldest grandson . He also started playing games like civilization for strategy challenges on his own as well.

The kids are still fairly young and always look forward to playing games with grampa so hopefully that can carry on for a while more. As me says his dad seems even better now after 2 years of gaming mainly both his grandsons and a bit on his own compared to how he was even before retirement and his mobility issues. Like my friend said it may not help everyone but it helped us and he really thinks it could be beneficial for most seniors to some capacity.