"Isn't that game for kids?"

[Steve]

I was hanging out at a buddy's house yesterday, he had a few friends over, and discussion eventually turned to gaming -- my buddy always asks me what I'm playing when I go over there; we have similar tastes in games.

Started talking about Ark, one of our other friends interrupts. "Isn't that game for kids though?"

I thought maybe they were thinking about Dino Discovery from the Switch (she has two of those for her kids) but she started describing the Bob's Tall Tales notes.

It got me to thinking: Maybe she's got a point. Am I too old for Ark now? None of this seems designed for adults. (Seriously, who decided the shoulder pauldrons on tek chestpieces should be animated? I'm a little surprised there's no flame decals, or that it doesn't start blaring the Skibidi Toilet song when worn.)

[Want To Tree]

The vast majority of the player base are kids because younger people tend to have more free time available to them given less responsibilities in life.

It seems those older folks that do play are either making time to do it, i.e. to play with their kids/partners/friends or just have more time available to them because they are working part-time, in-between jobs, living off the dole (UK), suffer from health issues that prevent a "normal" lifestyle or are simply retired like @Vig.

A lot of the popular Ark content creators that I used to watch that were older folks did fall into those groups. I know a couple who had tried to make that into a job but that simply wasn't sustainable so they have taken up full-time day jobs and rarely create content for the game anymore. I have not looked in quite some time but I would suspect that many of the content creators for the game nowadays are actually kids.

Is it a game for kids? Not specifically, I am sure that people of all ages could find enjoyment in it. It's just that not everyone has the time available to them to be able to do that.

EDIT: I guess there is maybe another side to that too. I think I fell into the group that made time to play it with friends, but none of us still play Ark because whilst we do have less available time these days to actually do that, it just doesn't seem to bring that feeling of enjoyment like it used to. I had a lot of fun playing with friends when the game was quite new and everyone else was also a big noob. It just became less and less fun over the years once that factor had changed.

[Veeshan]

While I think the dinosaurs alone do tend to bring it a bit toward the younger side of the spectrum, I would actually say that most mods and the things the devs adopt from mods are what really push it toward the younger side.

The game itself is actually fairly adult. Very high risk to reward ratios, initially rather large investment costs, even high performance requirements all imply a more adult experience.

So The Island circa 2000 whenever it started was a far more adult experience. Whereas today's 50x servers with 300 mods and instant teleports and Pokemon costumes and such are more for the kids.