Old Man, Look at my Life

Had you asked me in my mid-twenties whether I thought gaming would still be an integral part of my life when I turned the corner around forty, I have to admit that I would have said no. I think this probably says more about how little I understood at that age what being forty was going to feel like — in that as far as I can tell, I feel emotionally pretty much like I did in my twenties — than it does anything about how much I cared about gaming.

You have to understand, gaming still might have been a fad for me around age 25. I was a gamer during my childhood, but then for a variety of reasons I took a long hiatus from the pastime. During high school there were several years where I had neither a PC nor a console, and any games I did play found themselves along the fringes of my life. I might read the occasional PC Gamer or get in a game of Joe Montana Sports Talk Football at a friend’s house, but during a big chunk of what was arguably the golden age of PC gaming, I was fully invested in a social life that had no crossover and didn’t give video games much of a thought at all.

For five or six years, I left behind what I had perceived as a childish pursuit and a social albatross around my neck. Which is interesting because it’s only as I grew up and matured that I was comfortable letting video games back into my life. And even then, it was only slowly at first, and not really until 1997 or so that I would think to self-identify as a gamer.

So, rounding the corner of my mid-twenties, no — I figured this would all be over again in another handful of years. Color me surprised, now in the last two months of my thirties, that I am still an eager and insatiable gamer. I guess, should you ask me if I’ll still be playing when I’m 60, my answer will be a horrified, “Wait! I’m going to turn 60 someday?!”

Several hours later I might be calm enough again to say, yeah. I guess at this point I’ll probably still be gaming straight on into retirement.

I don’t know exactly why being a gamer and being a certain age are ideas connected in my mind. If I’m honest with myself, there are times when I’m playing a video game, that I feel a little bit embarrassed by that fact. Like, I’m out in the backyard playing with battle-scarred GI Joe figures, and any second someone in a suit will walk past and just give me a disparaging and disappointed look. I don’t necessarily think people growing up now will feel like this as they round the appropriate age to start seriously looking at buying red convertible sports cars and hair plugs. After all, my generation doesn’t really think of watching television the same way my parents generation did. Maybe this will be the same.

I like to think that by the time I end up in a Floridian retirement community, shuffleboard will be replaced by an old mock-up of an 80s arcade, with septuagenarians wearing more comfortable versions of the faded flannel and ripped jeans from their youth, hunched over a Street Fighter II machine trying to get their old bones to execute Chun Li’s helicopter move. Instead of cribbage boards, old people will break out shoe boxes full of Magic cards. We will go into the quiet sunsets of our lives with controllers in arthritic or gouty hands.

It’s not a bad dream actually, but it still seems pretty silly if I’m honest. There is a cognitive dissonance going on in my head when I try to picture myself playing the hottest FPS or RTS with liver spots on my hand. Then again, that same dissonance would have been there fifteen years ago if I had imagined myself at forty firing up the latest Tomb Raider or SimCity, not that anyone would still be playing those hoary old games in the twenty-teens.

I keep waiting to grow out of gaming, not because I want to but because I have an anachronistic idea about what I should be as an adult. It’s counter productive, really. After all, I genuinely believe that the easiest and best way to stay young is to keep having youthful experiences and to find joy in the things that others outgrow. Were I to finally and unfortunately abandon this hobby tomorrow, do I actually think I’d be better off or just closer to some false idealization of what a much younger me though being an adult was probably like.

But, at the same time I also wonder what else I might have done with those hours sunk into World of WarCraft, Mass Effect and Minecraft. What missed opportunities for bettering myself and the people around me went whizzing by as I crouched over a keyboard with my headphones and glassy-eyed stare.

I realize gamer-guilt is such an undignified cliche at this point, but that doesn’t make it any less a reality. When I start to feel this way though, I just try to remind myself that all these other people I know in their late thirties and early forties haven’t exactly become concert pianists or experts on Proust in the free time they spent not playing video games. The flaw I keep making is the assumption that gaming is unlike other hobbies or recreations. We all have the things we do for downtime, the things that sometimes we do too often or for too long because we just can’t tear ourselves away, and that we are pretty fortunate to be living in a period and a place where we have that tremendous luxury.

I am a grown up with a car, a mortgage, a mid-level corporate job and two precious tax deductions that are near and dear to my heart. Who cares whether I spend my few extra hours killing space aliens or watching Nascar?

So, why shouldn’t I still be gaming at 60, at 80 or at the ripe old age of 237, my life unnaturally extended through the application of bionics and genetic manipulation? After all, I think in some very important ways gaming keeps me feeling young, and there’s no good reason in the world to not want to hold onto to that feeling for as long as my meaty hands can.

Comments

Dana Carvey, huh.

1973 represent!

Excellent article! I just rounded the corner on 40 back in January, and many of these same thoughts were whizzing through my head. I came to the same realization that my friends and colleagues that don't game haven't progressed any further in the rat race than I have. If I hadn't frittered my time away on gaming, it would have been model airplanes or mowing my lawn.

Part of my mind rebels from time to time, running down the rabbit hole of 'it isn't religion that's the opiate of the masses any more, it's TV and VIDJAH GAMES!' Usually a good session of Skyrim or Xcom clears that right up.

Sean writes:
"I guess at this point I’ll probably still be gaming straight on into retirement."

I'm actually planning to use retirement to work through my Pile of Shame™. Looking forward to it.

So, during the surgery, I guess they installed a heart of gold?

You're damn right it keeps you feeling young. Actually, it may end up making you feel old as you curse the youth gamers of today for putting up with bullsh*t DRM and microtransactions because they don't know it was ever any different. Or maybe that's just me...

Anyway, everybody needs a hobby. Gaming isn't any different. If you spent your time being a film buff or reading a ton of books, would anybody in a suit walk by and shake their head disapprovingly? No, because these things don't have the social stigma of "they're just for kids" that video games did. I say did, because I really don't think they actually do anymore.

Unless of course you're a 60 year old politician thinking about how you can win some votes by taking a shot at an easy target. Except then you find out that your "easy" target isn't so easy, because a ton of voting adults are gamers now and OMG society's stance on video games is slowly shifting and all these people are mad at you because you said mean, stupid things about their favourite hobby and DANGER WILL ROBINSON! WARNING! WARNING!

/rant

Lawn. Off it. Way off it.

I've seen it, and it's not just in my future. I do some volunteer work down at the local assisted living complex, and while they're not playing Tomb Raider, there are liver spots galore on the hands swinging the controllers down there. They have 2 Wii - they had to because the girls kept beating the crap out of the guys at Wii Bowling and to help keep the guys from being annoyed about it they got them their own Wii so they can practice more.

I can't say much, as I think I'm in the gamer version of the buy-a-compensatory-vehicle phase myself. I've taken up FPS again, and while it hasn't been easy, I'm still loving it.

Talk to me again in 10-15 years. I'm on the high side of 50 and still self-identify as a gamer. My wife can't stand it, but she has her BBC period dramas and I have my games.

And the rest of you can stay off of my lawn...

Elysium wrote:

After all, I think in some very important ways gaming keeps me feeling young, and there’s no good reason in the world to not want to hold onto to that feeling for as long as my meaty hands can.

Forgive the crappy cell phone photo, but that's essentially why I bought this print that PA was selling a few years ago, that has been hanging on the wall of my home office ever since, says the guy about to turn 43 in a couple weeks.

IMAGE(http://s9.postimage.org/hjw2qzz27/image.jpg)

I was doing some research and I just ran into the perfect thing for this discussion.

Seriously, I need to find out if that is a real thing, or if the powers that be would have a fit if I did the mod myself.

Yea, me! No one else commented on "Guile’s helicopter move"?

gamerparent wrote:

1973 represent!

Same here!

Unlike Sean, I've been a gamer all my life, with no hiatus periods, so I've always figured that my retirement home was going to be a place for gaming too. Lots and lots of gaming.

Exactly!

As a late forty-something retiree I self identify as a gamer. My wife identifies me as a gamer. As we plan our next adventures - pretty big ones as they turn out - a significant part of the planning is "How is Moggy gonna continue playing his games, 'cos that's his thing, dont-cha-know."

MeatMan wrote:
Elysium wrote:

After all, I think in some very important ways gaming keeps me feeling young, and there’s no good reason in the world to not want to hold onto to that feeling for as long as my meaty hands can.

Forgive the crappy cell phone photo, but that's essentially why I bought this print that PA was selling a few years ago, that has been hanging on the wall of my home office ever since, says the guy about to turn 43 in a couple weeks.

IMAGE(http://s9.postimage.org/hjw2qzz27/image.jpg)

Huh, that's on the wall of my office too.

SixteenBlue wrote:

Huh, that's on the wall of my office too.

IMAGE(http://www.whoaorno.com/images/928.jpg)

Ah, a retirement village, yeah, I think I might get back into Magic then. I'll have all day to look at my cards and make decks, presuming they don't have mind-controlled gamepads cause I'd probably be unable to play with regular gamepads. Also, I've had an idea in my head for a while that action games should come with a calibration procedure; not for the controllers but for the reaction time and precision of the people playing them; cause Easy Mode sucks.

Im another Sean, turning 40 in ..2 months as well! I got my dad into gaming at the ripe age of 60. We never had any consoles growing up,hell we didnt have a TV for a good portion of my childhood. i didnt start playing pc games until college. Before 60 he'd only played hours of windows solitaire, so I bought him TES Oblivion (skyim wouldn't play on my dads laptop) and he hasn't look back, although my mother gives him funny looks for playing daffy, a young Elf maiden.
Next up ..Portal.

As a "recycled teenager" currently still gaming at 65 and forever long as I can continue to remember my passwords....

Great article. I'm closer to 60 than 40. I missed most of the golden age of pc gaming due to beer, girls (not really a factor, but it sounds better) and rock and roll. When we finally started a family I started my son out with an NES and Atari and I brought him through the ranks. In the process I became a gamer again. Although my skills are likely to make my 15 yr old son shake his head or laugh uncontrollably, I still have a good time and am doing my best to experience all the classics I've missed. I have no guilt about my passion. I love it. My only gaming related sadness is that vacant look I get now and again when bringing gaming into a "normal conversation" with my peers... Oh well. Their loss.

Without reading any of the above comments (because what kind of journalist would I be without researching a topic?) I say identifying yourself as a gamer will lose all meaning in a few years. In a few short years we will all be gamers only delineated by the type of games we play (FPS fanboy, RPG cosplayer, strategy elitist, etc).

bighoppa wrote:

Excellent article! I just rounded the corner on 40 back in January, and many of these same thoughts were whizzing through my head. I came to the same realization that my friends and colleagues that don't game haven't progressed any further in the rat race than I have. If I hadn't frittered my time away on gaming, it would have been model airplanes or mowing my lawn.

Part of my mind rebels from time to time, running down the rabbit hole of 'it isn't religion that's the opiate of the masses any more, it's TV and VIDJAH GAMES!' Usually a good session of Skyrim or Xcom clears that right up.

Yup. When I say I'm a gamer, my colleagues would just nod their head. They might not be gamers, but they know what that means. Older people in the town I worked in (man, being half-drunk makes it really hard to type clearly) just. Didn't. Get. It.

OK. I've read the entire article now so I'm an expert on that article. Budding underpaid journalists take note.

I don't get it.

I'm 40 years old and have never felt more like myself. I don't feel older than I should or younger. I feel like I am - a guy who likes games, loves his wife and loves his job. That's it.

Maybe I've been an oddball outcast for so long I've forgotten what it feels to be looked down upon by my generation or an older generation.

EDIT: OK, that last paragraph might have been a little harsh. I don't think you said you were looked down upon. But I get that impression from other online people that I spoke with.

My sig says all I have to say about this.

Awesome article! Been gaming a long time now (Apple IIc was my first computer) and still loving it! I still get excited about new games so I don't see me letting up any time soon. My wife doesn't care for it but it's my hobby and she accepts it. *twitches*

Strangeblades wrote:

Maybe I've been an oddball outcast for so long I've forgotten what it feels to be looked down upon by my generation or an older generation.

EDIT: OK, that last paragraph might have been a little harsh. I don't think you said you were looked down upon. But I get that impression from other online people that I spoke with.

Yeah, try talking to my wife. She would prefer it if I ditched my PC and never looked at it again.

whispa wrote:

Awesome article! Been gaming a long time now (Apple IIc was my first computer) and still loving it! I still get excited about new games so I don't see me letting up any time soon. My wife doesn't care for it but it's my hobby and she accepts it. *twitches*

That was also my first computer, I think! We got it in 1984 - I lived in what was then called Zaire, and we bought it on a 3 month vacation and took it back with us. I think the first game I had was called "Space Quarks", and we only had a green and black monochrome monitor. A friend had a C64, and we hooked his monitor up to the our Apple and WOW COLOR!! /nostalgia

My wife isn't a gamer, but she will play games sometimes. She played a pretty solid 3 years of WoW with me though, leveled to 70 and did some endgame raiding at 60 a la molten core. Her favourite games since have been Fallout 3 and Dark Souls (she found Demon's Souls too creepy and dark - I don't blame her!)

Keithustus wrote:

Yea, me! No one else commented on "Guile’s helicopter move"?

I was gonna post that Guile doesn't have a helicopter move. Razor kick and sonic boom.

Yup, that was just plain dumb of me. Been a while since I played Street Fighter, and somehow Chun Li's (I think that's right) move got pasted on to Guile in my head.

Edited original post.

Elysium wrote:

Yup, that was just plain dumb of me. Been a while since I played Street Fighter, and somehow Chun Li's (I think that's right) move got pasted on to Guile in my head.

Edited original post.

It's Guile's fabulous thighs. They'd distract anyone.