I think the article is right about how our relationship with games changes because our relationship with time changed. When you're younger, time is a seemingly infinite resource and money very much isn't. So a game that can occupy your time, either with the need to practice or even just tedium (looking at you, JRPGs) is more interesting and valuable. When you're older time is scarce, but money on the scale of game prices really isn't. You have a low tolerance for spending time on things that aren't enjoyable like grinding character levels or honing shooter skills.

Nintendo puts a lot of effort into making gaming a more locally social, and especially family-oriented, form of entertainment. And even for some single-player franchises like Mario and Zelda they are adept at creating whimsically enjoyable experiences, so their games often transcend age boundaries. But games like Pokemon, with its grinding and random battles, doesn't.

In my huge comment in this thread I make the argument that games that don't try to pull you in are more appealing to older gamers.

I don't want business to try and addict me. I don't even want character progression or saves of any kind -- except your story progress.

I feel part of console games and a lot of handheld consoles -- and older-generation games like Half Life, Quake and Mortal Kombat -- get it right.

Nowadays most games try their damnest to latch onto our sunk cost fallacy brain vulnerabilities.

I've found that as I've gotten older (only 26, mind you), I've turned to more single-player games. In fact, the only multiplayer games I play regularly are Path of Exile, Smash (and I play mostly solo mode, or against friends locally) and Splatoon (which is the only shooter I like). While I don't mind grinding for levels to beat a boss and such, I don't want to have to grind my technical skills at the game just to have fun. And, since that's all a lot of online games are, it gets extremely frustrating and tiresome really quickly. Plus, I've found that a lot of single player games are also less likely to try to tempt you into buying stuff -- like hell am I going to buy anything (DLC excluded, of course) when I'm already paying $60 for the base game! And, becuase of that, I think they don't try as hard to make them super addictive, since they're not counting on many sells from that aspect of them; sadly, I've also found enjoyable single player games getting less and less common...

Same here for me and my wife. We only haven't bought the PS4 Pro because we can't find enough place to put the couch but we're working on that.

Many modern PC games imitate the mobile games monetization model and are increasingly hostile to any semblance of long-lasting community. Throw in the mix the clueless multiplayer implementations of many games where people are as toxic as it can get and it's easily understandable why so many people leave those games when the novelty wears off.

We're gonna transition fully to console [and partially to PC] single player games with good stories and graphics (Lara Croft, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War come to mind) -- as soon as we handle our logistics problem.

I did this dance last year, so let me give you some free advice.

Show your kids how to save and how NOT to overwrite your save in BoTW.

Having my kids blow away my ~20 hours of work completely deflated me and I have not been able to get back into it since.