Exactly.
It’s analogous to the way that Reddit knowingly allowing some subs to exist repelled some users.
Most were able to get past it and simply not subscribe to subs they found objectionable, but I’m sure many people just stayed away once they learned that certain subs existed and were very much known about by Reddit admins.
One key difference here is the way that your instance is able to enforce rules and to some extent influence and filter your user experience, and that’s worth consideration too.
I’m also curious if and how an instance like lemmy.ml can, for example, delete comments, ban users, take down content in cases of cross-instance interaction. Could the admins of lemmy.ml, for example, ban a user from another instance from Lemmy completely? From their local communities? Could they remove that person’s comments? Can they prevent their own users from seeing content they don’t like on other instances? Can they moderate content from their users that is posted to communities on other instances?
I don’t think there’s an age cutoff, or even a strict limit of social acceptability, but I do feel like the older you get, the less time people your age will devote, on average, to gaming…or at least the less focus they’ll give gaming.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing to still be super into video games in your 40s or 50s, but since there will be fewer people your age as invested as you, this will stand out, and one should reasonably expect this to have an impact on how some age-peers view and interact with you, for better or for worse.
The fact that a focus on gaming is more prevalent in kids than adults may carry the connotation that someone has failed to grow up in other ways as well, since they never moved past their gaming phase. It’s not always accurate or always negative, but subjective opinion might be both of those things.