Is KSP for Older Users?

[FITorion]

There is a certain amount of manual dexterity required... My niece who is 5 should soon be ready and have the spatial awareness developed enough to construct rockets and begin learning to fly them.

But my nephew who is 12 would not like the game. There's no other players to destroy... no story, no path set out before him.

The game requires you to be capable of setting your own goals. You need to be able to see the potential of the system, visualize what you want to accomplish and then make it happen. These characteristics are less common in young players and more common in older players.

There certainly are younger players who can and do play without direction from an adult but that is not common. Wonderful and they should be encouraged... but not common.

Also as a side note this game taught me more about orbital mechanics then my aerospace engineering and astrophysics classes. There is just not substitute for experiencing the consequences of the math directly.

Edited May 13, 2014 by FITorion

[Deathsoul097]

There is a certain amount of manual dexterity required... My niece who is 5 should soon be ready and have the spatial awareness developed enough to construct rockets and begin learning to fly them.

But my nephew who is 12 would not like the game. There's no other players to destroy... no story, no path set out before him.

The game requires you to be capable of setting your own goals. You need to be able to see the potential of the system, visualize what you want to accomplish and then make it happen. These characteristics are less common in young players and more common in older players.

There certainly are younger players who can and do play without direction from an adult but that is not common. Wonderful and they should be encouraged... but not common.

Also as a side note this game taught me more about orbital mechanics then my aerospace engineering and astrophysics classes. There is just not substitute for experiencing the consequences of the math directly.

Yeah, my cousin is the same. She's six, and obsessed over when I showed her "kerbil". She's even been making little models of them, and she's not to bad at it. Last I heard, my aunt was looking at buying her the game to mess around with. She loved seeing all of the different places you could go, and things you could do and see, and even managed to make some decent designs in-game. (With my helping hand, admittedly.)

(It's too bad really. I would love to be able to show her more, but she's literally half a world away. 'Tis what I get for living in New Zealand, I guess.)

[WinkAllKerb'']

It all depend how you look at this from an ego time relative or not nodal buterfly point of view. I m aggree that not everyone at ease with that but it's part of the process.

Edited May 13, 2014 by WinkAllKerb''

[KerbMav]

The game requires you to be capable of setting your own goals. You need to be able to see the potential of the system, visualize what you want to accomplish and then make it happen. These characteristics are less common in young players and more common in older players.

There certainly are younger players who can and do play without direction from an adult but that is not common. Wonderful and they should be encouraged... but not common.

Thanks to the "contains loud sound and pretty graphics, gameplay not included"-games that are produced today, the "let me explain it for the dumb, even though there is no deep story at all"-stuff in TV and cinema.

Also - and I almost feel old for saying so - the lack of reading to get the imagination going. (It does not even have to be world literature, anything will do really, as reading requires the reader to think rather than to just consume the story.)

I think your post sums it up really good, it is not a question of age at all.

[WinkAllKerb'']

neuronal scheme catalyst, the way it will be designed and audience it will be accessible is up to Squad judgement afer all.

A younger UI variation could be a nice gift in comparison of all the crap stimuli out there.

[tutrakan4e]

I'm 14 and I have 150 hours played. I've done everything except taking off Eve. Literally, docking is easy, interplanetary travel is second nature, landing is so easy. SSTOs are no problem. KSP is for everyone who like explosions.

[Guest]

KSP is great in that it offers so much variation. Younger players will enjoy sandbox and making ridiculous contraptions out of stock parts, more mature ones would play career or make historical replicas, and for the real hardcore nerds there's a number of realism mods like RSS to make the game even thougher. And it's all customizable, so everyone can tailor the experience to their own needs.

[WinkAllKerb'']

that's the point, curent customizable and default status hierarchy as it's now on steam and curse. I ll be sad to think of child that could try and leave ksp just because it miss in the current beta stat a few more ergonomy and optional assist by default.

From a dev point of view, obtaining an ESRB, PEGI rating for young audience with such a project as KSP might be something to be proud of.

Easy, definetly not. Doable, probably. Worth it, certainly. It all has to do with potential in the egg.

Edited May 13, 2014 by WinkAllKerb''

[Aphobius]

My 4yo nephew loves this game. He got so excited when I showed it to him. He likes challenges, so he asked me what's the hardest thing to do, I've told him that a landing and return mission from Eve is the hardest thing to do in this game.

Next day I was amazed to see he already built a ship with a crew of 4 kerbals, capable of landing on Eve and return. And because he always liked the space shuttle, he built that ship in orbit, using a shuttle to launch the parts.

[PwnedDuck]

As an Eeloo-and-back-again-er who started playing at age 15, not necessarily.

[Chiboko]

KSP is a game for geeks and nerds of all ages, well maybe not all but I've been a geek for nearly 50 years now and the game appeals to detailed oriented sciencey part of me that has been a major part of my personality all that time.

Really? The appeal to me was always that of creating and optimizing a space borne military. I guess that's what a decade (more than half my life) of playing mechwarrior and an interest in the clan (a faction in the game) way of life does to a girl.

[Deathsoul097]

Really? The appeal to me was always that of creating and optimizing a space borne military. I guess that's what a decade (more than half my life) of playing mechwarrior and an interest in the clan (a faction in the game) way of life does to a girl.

Yeah, I know what you mean, like Macey Dean's series, that kind of thing. Military vessels and setups have always been an appealing aspect and possibility. That's why I'm making my mod. (Also, you have an epic avatar. Yuno is undoubtedly one of the best characters ever. Cant beat Petra though. XD)

[hasty6]

ahem* i'm twelve and i have gone to both moons of kerbin, duna and gilly and i can easily orbit without maneuver nodes. I have but two rovers on the mun and i have completed two thirds of the tech tree in career mode. The reason i probably like ksp is because i am mad om science ,but still there are gonna be some 10 year olds out there who have captured an asteroid!

[tajampi]

I'm 12 actually, i have built a satellite network (Remotech), 2 space stations, landed in Mün, Minmus, Duna, Eve and Laythe, captured an asteroid ( But the game crashed ), built a satellite network around Mün, mapped Kerbin, Mün, Minmus and Duna is in the proccess (ScanSat) and other things... ( Since i started..., i were 11, became 12 in april this year...)

So i think that the age does not matter, interest and patience matter

Cheers!

[nobbers12345]

It's a shame that 12 year olds get the stereotype of assholes on cod.

I know you don't mean that everyone does it, but it's really kind of sad that we get that stereotype.

[ximrm]

In my opinion it is for everyone who ever had fun building things.Legos for example.

I todays schools(not only in Korea) they use actual videogames like Total War to show and interact in in the napoleonian wars.

KSP would be a perfect fit, as it requires a lot of different skills.Especially how to cope with problems.I bet this would interest a lot of children to become engieers or even astronauts/cosmonauts.

I learned a lot from it(I'm 28) and still keep learning.With that many young scientists, I could witness the advent of interplanetary travel during my lifetime.

Go Squad...send free copies to every school that has a computer!

[boxman]

IQ has been steadily going up for decades. If not for all the sound-bite distractions and impulse facilitators that teens and pre-teens cope with in their typical environments, I'm guessing the average 10 year old could do much better at this game than the average 20 year old. I tend to think that 10 year olds today are in fact "smarter" than 10 year olds of 20 years ago, despite any superficial appearances otherwise.

That said, yes, I think with the options that most juveniles and teens who might be in KSP's target market have at their disposal, KSP is not likely to be sufficiently alluring to compete with the other options.

Even if IQ has been going up in total that does not say much about cognitive skills otherwise. Just look at school results and you will see a decline in everything from literacy to math. The tests have also been dumbed down alot over decades and yet the results are down all over the west.

[SlimeCrusher]

I'm 12 actually, i have built a satellite network (Remotech), 2 space stations, landed in Mün, Minmus, Duna, Eve and Laythe, captured an asteroid ( But the game crashed ), built a satellite network around Mün, mapped Kerbin, Mün, Minmus and Duna is in the proccess (ScanSat) and other things... ( Since i started..., i were 11, became 12 in april this year...)

So i think that the age does not matter, interest and patience matter

Cheers!

Im 12 too, i haven't done too much though, i sended alot of Mun landers and rovers, landed on Minmus, went to Duna with a near-replica of the Viking 1 (or 2), went to Jool and performed a fly-by of Tylo, Laythe and Vall, and not too much more. I am more of making planes and trucks (that never leave Kerbin), i also did my first successful SSTO the last week or so... And also ALOT of orbital satellites of Kerbin, a few on the Mun, 1 on Duna (The one i deployed while doing Viking 1... That i forget about solar panels) and i don't know what more.

As you said, all you need is patience and interest, you're not gonna get anywhere if all your interest in space is shooting and fighting, or if you don't have the patience to learn orbital mechanics

[Minarkhaios]

My 5 years old daughter manages to put a "dad's design" rocket into stable orbit.

Or create apparatus that makes jeb cries in fear.

So I think there is no lower limit for KSP.

On the upper limit, alzheimer is tough, but we already all forget to add something in the staging sequence. So it's kind of the same thing for everyone.

Parkinson is also really tough. Except if you want to simulate turbulence shaking.

All in all, as most of us don't understand anything and still manage to accomplish something, I'd say that there no age limit of any kind in KSP (expect with the KSP nude mod, of course)

[Alchemist]

The good thing about KSP is that it has so many levels of play (from building insane things to flying interplanetary missions) and allows gentle progression from any skill level, that everyone who want to learn can play and progress.

The only problem could be mental overload exceeding learning capabilities (what often happens in schools).

In fact... sometimes I come from the university completely mentally drained... and find that I have nothing to play because almost all my games require extensive thinking (okay, there are couple that require quick reactions, but that's not an option, too)

[Ikaneko]

I don't think so. I'm twelve and even though I've never gone interplanetary, I still try hard; I rule the Kerbin System! I think KSP is a game that appeals to all age groups. It is effortlessly playable so anybody can be a master at it. Therefore I think it's unfair to sweepingly generalise U-16s (Hell, HOCGaming's been aroud since he was twelve).

[Jean Deaux]

I think it would be better summed up as KSP appeals to brainiacs instead of brawniacs.

[Guest]

It is effortlessly playable so anybody can be a master at it.

I wouldn't go that far. Learning curve is very smooth and there's a lot of fun to be had without really understanding the science, but at the same time, to really master KSP, you need to put a lot of thought into it, not to mention learn it well.

[Commander Zoom]

The OP's question has surely been (thoroughly) answered by now, but I'm 44, and I've always been fascinated by space. Born during Apollo, saw the birth and the end of the Shuttle program (and both of the disasters in between), the first stunning pictures of the outer system brought to us by the Voyagers...

[DirtyHarry]

The OP's question has surely been (thoroughly) answered by now, but I'm 44, and I've always been fascinated by space. Born during Apollo, saw the birth and the end of the Shuttle program (and both of the disasters in between), the first stunning pictures of the outer system brought to us by the Voyagers...

Yep; that's my appeal too. I was 4 when Apollo 11 landed, which was just old enough to be bored with it all.

I remember getting up with my grandfather at 0-dark-thirty to watch the launch, and seeing tears streaming down his face (understand HE was old enough to appreciate the news of the Wright brothers flight as he was about 10 at the time). I asked him what was the matter, and he replied "We're going to the MOON!!!" I was confused... "Didn't we do that a little while ago already?" All my short life there had been rocket launches on TV seemingly every week or so. My fascination only grew as I got older, and really kicked off in my early teens when my Scoutmaster of our local troop turned out to have a day job as the program manager for Voyager 2. We always had the coolest displays for the jamborees. I built model rockets madly as a teen, and read everything I could get my hands on about the space program. In my mid-20s, I was insanely jealous of my best friend who managed to just stumble into a job at Space Camp. I purchased and gobbled up every video game about space I could; even the silly ones.

I still play FPS and other more "twitch" games, but am just in love with KSP. Probably around 500 hours logged on it at this point, and I can't wait for .24 to come out so I can start a whole new save. :-)

-Insp. 2211