Are you getting too old for gaming?

[Zeyla]

Another great Cracked.com article on gaming, from the point-of-view of the "older gamer".

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-tell-youre-getting-too-old-video-games/

So much of this article rang true with me. This is one of my favorite excerpts from the article (talking about how we used to wish there was more "playtime" in a game):

"Well, game developers listened to the 17 year-old me. It's just that by the time they got around to figuring out how to make a 300-hour game, I had a job and three kids, and 300 hours represents every minute of gaming time I'll have available to me in the next three years. In other words, selling me that game is the same as taunting me, reminding me that the same obligations that let me afford to buy games also prevent me from playing them."

And this one: "Boredom is a young man's disease." ...ah so true, for me at least ;)

[Allara]

Nearly that entire article resonated with me. Sigh.

[Gheltire]

I recently got my nephew a 360 because I thought he was severely stunted in his social growth by not having a gaming system at 13. Sounds stupid but there it is;P I bought him a yr XBL subscription, halo reach, Black Ops, some points and said we will hang out sometime:) Which we do...about twice a month tops. Im still the guy headshotting off the building "Hey Nathan, watch this!" /snipe! but what Im amazed at is hes fully loaded out his visual armor over the summer. He can just sit there and play. Not exceptionally well although he knows every easter egg in every bungie game. Me and Kathris would still run circles around him. But thats ALL HE DOES. At first I was thinking "man did I screw up? What about his grades uh oh" Turns out hes straight As, ahead on his work.

When I log into say Hi hes got those teenager friends who talk a lot of shit from rule #5 but Im still good enough to make them respect the old guy. But Zeyla you are so totally right that these new games are taunting us. And here I am, about to turn 40, great job, income, blah blah blah, Im JEALOUS of my 13 yr old nephew because he can get all the armor subsets on Halo Reach. Or that he would probably have finished warhammer 40k by now, or daggerdale, or starcraft, or dragon age 2, or, or, or, or, or...

Gaming kindof is a reminder that if I were single, and wanted to eat Ramen, this would be an awesome Game X. But somewhere back there I chose family, and professionalism, and a "plan". And dammit did I choose the right thing? :)

For the hell of it I downloaded the demo to Catherine. And creepy old guy here trying to get a seminaked dude with a pillow through a block maze, I thought, is this what the last generation felt like when someone programmed Leisure Suit Larry for them? What IS my game now or am I just about done

[Zeyla]

Hah hah, I was looking at renting Catherine as well, it looked interesting. Although it seems a bit too oddball for my tastes.

I have been a fairly serious gamer for a long time now, I still get the new systems (eventually) but now it is more for my son and his friends than myself. I like being the house that all of the kids come over to. It is annoying at times, but when they are teenagers it is invaluable. It was that way when my daughter was in her teens, we knew all of her friends really well, so we ALWAYS knew what was going on :)

Now I'm in the same boat as you Gheltire, knocking on 40, very happy with my career/side-consulting business and family life. But with that change comes far less game time than I used to have. I lost a few years to the WoW-beast, it sucked a fair amount of time away from family/friends. I made it a priority and everything else kind of suffered because of it. It wasn't a total loss, I have made some great friends in Hoss! You guys are kind of like extended family, heh heh :)

I still love gaming and wish I could play more, but I'm content where I am at. So I'll just continue to squeeze in my gaming in little bits here and there. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll finally finish LA Noire! (Great game btw)

[Phaera]

Hah, that's a pretty good read and very true.

I grew up with games, along with my brothers and cousins. Totally different from now. It takes a lot to get me to finish a game, whereas my kids jump into any and every game. Chris and I tend to have to find games to play together, because if we play with the kids, either we stomp the crap out of them, or them us.

It amazes me how quickly kids are able to adapt to games and play so incredibly well. And then I go back and try to play an old game, like Legend of Zelda, and think.. Oh yeah, I was able to do that too apparently. ;)

[Lonskils]

I remember playing that awful 2600 PAC man until my palms were raw from that hellish joystick atari and commodore 64/128 used. Impossible mission. I hacked uptime iii to give me max food mana all by myself using a text editor on the save disk.

Teen years are so magical. Before eq it was just heroes if might and magic. Mmo games hit me like a meth sedition and held sway for to long. The points about obligations are so damn true.

[Gheltire]

its funny all the old tricks you used to know/do...Wizardry you could do the identify #0 to get a bajillion gold once you got a bishop going....think that was my first PC "cheat". Feel like I did something screwy with Kings Quest on the PC Jr involving a writeprotected disk...Maybe that and putting my VHF dial in between channels so I could watch late night nudie movies on showtime back before digital cable boxes:) but thats a different topic

mwuahahah

[Loniel Bonewalker]

Speaking of feeling old while gaming. I was asked to play mortal Kombat on ps3, well when the game turned on I went to enter the blood code. For some reasons my mind flashed back to playing mortal Kombat on Sega genesis for the first time and entering the blood code thinking how bad ass it was. Was funny and disturbing in a odd way how I was being looked at probably looking like I was having a stroke while holding the controller.