How I Beat Age Bias as a 69-Year-Old Video Game Designer

Leaning into my creativity and experience helped me find new success

William D. Volk,

AARP

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Published May 14, 2026

a gif of a man in a Mario Kart racecar during a race with characters from the game

Jude Buffum

At 69, I still make video games.

That surprises some people. It shouldn’t — but it does.

I’ve worked in the video game industry for over 45 years. I started when games were loaded from cassette tapes and floppy disks. I was fortunate enough to help launch computer game divisions in the early days and later served as a vice president at one of the largest game companies of the early 1990s. Back then, work experience was considered valuable. Gray hair, if you had it, suggested you’d survived enough product cycles to know what you were doing.

But something shifted when I turned 50.

The video game industry is young — very young. A 2023 survey by the International Game Developers Association found that 56 percent of employees were between 18 and 37 years old, and only 3 percent were 58 or older. In an earlier IGDA survey, 61 percent of developers said they saw themselves staying in the industry “indefinitely.” I once felt that way, too.

Then I noticed doors closing.

There were subtle moments: interview panels where I was clearly the oldest person in the room. Recruiters who seemed excited on the phone but were less enthusiastic in person. Conversations that suddenly emphasized “culture fit” and “energy.”

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And there were the not-so-subtle ones.

I went through multiple rounds of interviews for a senior role. The company flew me out to its city. I was told to start looking for a place to live. It seemed done. The following Monday, the offer was withdrawn — no explanation. Just silence.

Other times, I was ghosted after interviews for positions that matched my experience almost perfectly. When you’ve led teams, shipped products and helped companies grow, it’s hard not to take that personally.

Gregg Segal

William D. Volk designed the video game Figure This Out!.

Starting to ‘Figure This Out!’

By my mid-50s, I realized something uncomfortable: If I wanted to stay in the work I loved, I could no longer depend on traditional employment.

So, I made a choice. I became entrepreneurial.

I began consulting. I helped launch startups. I worked with founders who valued experience — not just for war stories, but for pattern recognition. When you’ve lived through platform shifts, hardware crashes, publishing upheavals and market bubbles, you develop a calm perspective. Younger teams often appreciated that.

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But something else happened along the way. In trying to stay relevant, I had drifted away from the thing that had drawn me to games in the first place.

It wasn’t titles or executive roles.

It was ideas.

When I was young, I fell in love with games because of their magic — the spark of turning a simple concept into something interactive. A twist that makes people smile. A puzzle that makes someone feel smart.

Somewhere between boardrooms and budgets, I’d lost touch with that spark.

In the 2000s — especially since then — I began returning to it. Instead of chasing roles, I started chasing concepts again.

A few months ago, I stumbled onto a visual puzzle idea — a game where simple images combine to form common phrases. I started experimenting. I designed a few puzzles and shared them online to gauge reaction. The response surprised me. People of all ages jumped in. They debated answers. They laughed when they figured them out. They shared them with friends.

That small experiment became a reminder: Creativity doesn’t retire.

The game evolved into Figure This Out!, but the real victory wasn’t launching something new. It was reconnecting with the original joy of making something from scratch.

Gregg Segal

There’s a narrative in tech — and especially in gaming — that innovation belongs to the young. Youth certainly can bring energy and a fresh perspective. But experience can bring something different and equally powerful: context.

When you’ve worked through decades of change, you learn what endures. You learn that platforms come and go, but human curiosity doesn’t. You learn that good design isn’t about trends — it’s about clarity and delight. You also learn resilience. I’ve had projects canceled, companies sold and ideas shelved. The longer your career, the more times you’ll hear “no.” Surviving that builds muscle.

4 Tips for Handling Age Discrimination

Age bias is real. Pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. If you’re in your 50s or 60s and sensing it, you’re not imagining it.

But here’s what helped me:

Separate your identity from your job title.

For a long time, my sense of worth was tied to the roles I held. When those opportunities dried up, it felt like personal erasure. When I reframed myself not as “a former VP” but as “a creator who makes games,” a shift happened. Titles can be taken away. Skills can’t.

Lean into experience rather than apologizing for it.

Early on, I tried to minimize my past — trimming my résumé, downplaying older projects. Eventually, I realized that felt wrong for me. The right collaborators value depth. You only need a few of them.

Build instead of waiting.

Age bias thrives in gatekept systems. Entrepreneurship, even on a small scale, can remove gatekeepers. Today’s tools make it possible to prototype ideas quickly and share them widely. When I tested my puzzle concept online, I didn’t need permission.

Return to what made you curious in the first place.

When I was 24, I wasn’t chasing status. I was chasing the thrill of an idea coming to life. When I re-centered on that feeling, the discouragement lost some of its power.

At 69, I don’t know how the industry will evolve. Gaming continues to change at a dizzying pace — new platforms, artificial intelligence, global audiences. But I do know this: The joy of solving a problem, of designing something that exercises the brain and makes people smile, doesn’t depend on age.

In fact, I would argue that aging can give you an advantage. You’re less concerned with proving yourself and more focused on the work itself. You understand that creativity is not a ladder to climb but a muscle to keep building.

The irony is that by stepping outside traditional career paths, I found more satisfaction than I did chasing executive titles.

Age bias forced me to rethink how I work, but it also pushed me back to why I work.

And that, in the end, has made all the difference.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.

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