Playing Games With Dementia

A couple of days ago, I played a co-op game (Marvel Champions) with a couple of friends, and one of those friends is 72 years old and retired. They are both intelligent, experienced gamers, but the retired guy seemed to struggle even more with the rules during the second game. He has played 3 or 4 times within the last year, including once just two weeks ago. At the time, I chalked it up to him being tired, but I am now wondering if he is exhibiting early signs of dementia. We repeatedly had to remind him to tap certain cards when he was using resources, and to not tap certain other cards that simply displayed ongoing bonuses. He kept passing cards from his hand to us so we could tell him what they meant, even though they were clearly written and his eyesight is normal. I'm not a doctor or even a caregiver, so it's none of my business, but it really dragged down the pace of the second game.

My mother definitely had dementia in her final years, and I vividly remember trying to play Arkham Horror with her once, maybe a year after her official diagnosis of dementia. (She arrived several hours early for a visit on a day when I had friends over to play board games.) She was very enthusiastic about the game components and wanted to play, but her every turn required me to explain the relevant rules and her options. To be fair, I do that to some extent for any new player of Arkham Horror, but normal people catch on after a few turns.

In recent years, I have seen multiple news items that indicated that playing board games (but not computer games) can reduce the chance of getting dementia. I hope that's true, because I would have to give up playing board games if I was unable to remember the rules or even what I was doing each turn. My mother loved to read mysteries and solve complex puzzles, and she was also a very warm and friendly person. Dementia eventually took all of that away from her. At one point, she could pick up a book and read the sentences out loud without any problem, then close the book and be completely unable to describe what she just read. She started fumbling for words in conversation, and eventually it got so bad that she went from being a talkative extrovert to a quiet introvert. Not that there is anything wrong with being an introvert.

Aside from online conversations and the occasional phone call, my social circle shrank to my department at work during the first year of the pandemic. A year after the pandemic started, my employer finally hired someone else to handle the HR function so I could focus on accounting. I went from spending an average of two hours a day interacting with job candidates and recent hires to zero, and by last fall, I started noticing myself fumbling for the occasional word. I mean, we all do that from time to time, but it seemed like it was happening more often to me. I am now about ten years younger than my mom was when she got diagnosed with dementia, so I worry about it at times.

On the other hand, I dated a woman for three months late last year, and another one woman for a month this year, and I was never at a loss for words while talking to them. I taught myself how to play Magic Realm in 2020, and it is exponentially more difficult than any other game that I have played that wasn't a war game. So maybe I am worrying too much about this, and maybe it really is just a temporary side-effect of social distancing.

Have any of you had to deal with dementia in friends or family? Any gaming stories involving dementia?

I’m not sure what his condition is, but the youtuber Dusted Game Shelf is an older guy who is losing his memory and his channel is a sort of therapy for him. He talks about his games, sessions he’s played or unboxings — standard stuff — not as much about mental health, but he does occasionally mention it.

My mom died from early onset Alzheimers. I'm just about at the age where she first showed signs. In addition, her brother had it and my dad's sister had it. It terrifies me, and I've sworn that if I start to show the early signs of it I will make sure I don't ever show the later signs. It's absolutely the worst.

And I too was playing with an older gamer who I felt was showing signs. He would tell the same stories over and over, forget rules that had been explained several times, and other things. He'd been a gamer a long time and had also developed habits that certainly didn't help things. For example, he would do actions out of order or forget to take income or whatever, which drove me crazy, but which seemed to make things worse. It made me extremely uncomfortable and I stopped gaming with him. I didn't handle it well, and that's on me.

I just got back from the inspection for my new house. Living by myself now will be liberating but also frightening. I don't want to be found dead on my sofa after two weeks of no one hearing from me. I don't want to be discovered wandering a block away in my pajamas with no idea how I got there. Not having someone around to make sure I'm okay is scary if I don't trust my own brain.