On Apr 3rd, a video showing a player about to play Elden Ring received 400K views, and 20K likes on Bilibili.com. The player is called “Old Yang”, an 87-year-old Chinese gamer who played many console games over the last two decades.
For most Chinese people, they can scarcely imagine an elderly person playing a game beyond a tile-matching puzzle game. It is also common to see young players complaining about how their families, especially parents and elders, forbid them from playing video games. In this case, an aged PC/Console player is rare in China. This could explain why Old Yang has become popular in the past two years and has reached over 200K followers on social media.
A glimpse of Old Yang’s PS4 game collection.
Old Yang started to play video games in 1998. He had just retired and was attracted by the video games his grandchildren were playing. He then bought a PlayStation 1 and started his life as a gamer. In the following decades, Old Yang has kept a daily routine: he has physical exercises in the morning and plays video games for no longer than 3 hours in the afternoon. As time went on, the PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and hundreds of games came into Old Yang’s collection.
Pepsiman on PlayStation 1 was one of the Old Yang early collections.
Among all the games he had played, Old Yang was fond of shooting and role-playing games. The Far Cry franchise was one of his favorite game series. Old Yang spent a lot of time on Far Cry 5 since its release in 2018 and was satisfied because “the game is vast”. Due to his age, his reaction speed wasn’t great, so he had to try extra hard and learn from every failure. Old Yang made handwritten notes for the game, including tips, lore, and hand-drawing maps. He said the key to beating the game is to “Be smart” rather than to “Be quick”. There were comments on the notes, including impressions about the game, like “Joseph is alive, so it could be a loose end.” or “hard gliding is the right way to win”.
The notes made by Old Yang
In August of 2021, Old Yang still played Far Cry 5 occasionally because he had beat every other game he was interested in at the time, and no other game had grabbed his interest until October when Far Cry 6 was released.
Old Yang also has much admiration for adventure games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted. Lara Croft is his favorite character, and he commented that “She has an adventurous spirit, does not fear death or difficulties, has the strength to fight and survive. That is not an easy task.”
In November of 2021, a gift was given to Old Yang by SIE Shanghai. It was an exclusive customized PlayStation 5 with Old Yang’s name and the signatures of Soeda Takehito (SIE Shanghai Deputy Chairman) Tatsuo Eguchi (SIE Shanghai President) on its casing.
Old Yang was not so fond of Elden Ring despite his grandson having recommended it to him. Normally, Old Yang plays games on easy mode, and Elden Ring doesn’t have one. After dying several times to Godrick’s soldiers, Old Yang stopped playing Elden Ring and switched to Resident Evil Village.
Many people are scared to play horror games like Resident Evil and believe it is not suitable for elders since there are jump scares and creepy moments. However, it was not a problem for Old Yang at all. He has beaten the game many times and loved it. His wife said, “he could have a better sleep quality after killing the ‘Ghosts’ in the game.”
Many players have been fascinated by Old Yang. Some comment that having a healthy and cheerful life with an unstopped passion for games is the retirement life they expected to have.