Five men and one woman, motivated to form a team in just a few months and participate in a semi-professional competition on League of Legends. What sets them apart from all the others? Their age. They are mostly between 50 and 62 years old. Only one player, who is replacing his sick father, is in his thirties.
These five seniors are part of the Wardens team, supported by Macif as well as the agencies Lintrus and Values. They will participate in the Gamers Assembly competition, a gaming conference, on Saturday, April 4, 2026, in Poitiers.
The Wardens have five very different profiles, ranging from beginners to experienced players. Sylvain, also known as Mélianfoire, 36 years old, a math teacher, is filling in for his father for health reasons. Sylvie, 53, also known as Ozephe, an IT project manager, has been playing video games since childhood and plays with friends every evening on the Discord app. Franck, 50 years old, also known as Legauloisdu54, retired early due to health issues. He has been playing League of Legends since 2018 and plays every day with his son. The game has become an escape for him. And Florent, 51, alias Kenshoo, a pharmacy director deeply involved in his professional life and in the competition. He is the most experienced in the team and the one giving directions. Through Wardens, he aims to show that one can combine professional success and a passion for gaming. He has even started his own Twitch channel to document his journey.
Three weeks of boot camp before the competition is like the team’s mascot. Alain, also known as PapyBlade, 62 years old and retired. He has been playing video games for fifty years, and he is still learning about them. “I have been playing League of Legends for a long time, but I really improved with Wardens,” said the sexagenarian. The hardest part is not the language, but remembering everything. For him, who also streams on Twitch, joining Wardens was not an obvious choice.
It was his community that introduced him to the recruitment campaign. Originally, PapyBlade did not want to participate, as he thought the project was about “segregating people, putting the old in one corner and the young in another.” But after much insistence, he was convinced. “I was told that there was no one better than me to represent the project. I want to show that the elderly, yes, they play belote, mahjong, and dominoes, but they also play League of Legends.”
And coaching sessions with one of the best French coaches, Frédéric Sialelli, also known as Glopo, do not scare him. “You have to take advice from the younger ones. But if one day they need advice on making their homemade rillettes like me, then it will be my turn to help them.”
For the Wardens, the goal is not to win the Gamers Assembly tournament. Their head coach, Glopo, confirms this: “This tournament concludes the project after three weeks of boot camp. We started from very far, but I have seen them all progress a lot. The gap during the Gamer Assembly is huge. The goal is to say, ‘Hi, we are here, we are seniors, we love competition, we love to play,’ and I think it’s a success.”
