We all know how old we are and for those of us who are in their 50s or 60s, well it’s safe to say that you’re energy levels, reaction times, and strength might not be what it used to be compared to when you were in your teens, early 20s, or 30s. In fact scientists have recently conducted a study in which they used Blizzard’s RTS game, StarCraft 2, to prove just how scary the aging process is.
Now StarCraft 2 is a pretty fast paced game and if you’ve seen the professionals play, you’ll know that they’re constantly clicking and pressing buttons from start to the end of the game. This is because there are a lot of things that need to be micro-managed, even in the heat of battle where you pull out dying troops or activate certain abilities and so on.
All of this requires a relatively fast reaction from the gamer and according to the study, they found that cognitive decline begins at the age of 24. “A typical Bronze player at the age of 39, equal in all other respects to a 24 year-old adversary, can be expected to be around 150 milliseconds slower in their typical looking-doing latencies, costing about 30 seconds over a typical 15 minute Bronze game containing 200 looking-doing cycles.”
Of course this isn’t to say that the 39-year old player isn’t good at what he does, it’s just that perhaps he might be slower. This could also mean that they can employ other tactics and strategies to win, but if they were to go head to head purely on speed and reaction time alone, they might find themselves on the losing end. What do you guys think?
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