Older gamers

[RitsukoSonoda]

Oki, so...erryone weighed in on their firs console, how about us PC players...first beige box? Mine was a Tandy 1000TX (for home, Da brought it home all proud xD) and at school we was usin Apple IIE. Home PC was quickly upgraded wit a 44meg HDD which had to be broke into 2 partitions, you poor, poor 8 bit bus you. Played various computer games of the time, mostly of the Sierra variety

(Edit) To add, I also got a Commodore 64 later on for about $5 at a garage sale that included EVERYTHING, monitor, 2 floppy drives, even a tape drive! Many hours of copying code from the included books into the machine so I could pay various games. Spoiled rotten kid I thought switching disks and typing executables was hard xD

Eh first PC? Some IBM cloned 186 that had a built in turbo button that could make the computer run in slow motion if pressed on when the PC was booted then released. I remember the original kings quest, police quest, space quest series of games and leisure suit larry. I'd still have it if it hadn't eventually caught fire. Now the like 60lb steel block that was its HDD is my doorstop. I do still have a working Atari 2600 and a collection of games that contain the worst game ever made that they buried in a landfill for decades until they were forced to dig them up and dispose of them properly and possibly the most offensive game ever created that was one of the reasons the ESRB was created. >.>

[BiffWellington]

My first home computer was made by Bally. It was sort of a hybrid of a primitive game console and a primitive computer. It hooked up to your TV, and used cartridges and controllers for its (IIRC) 4-bit games, but also had the capacity for BASIC programming using a weird shift-system to input text on its built-in number pad. It had an external cassette drive for saving your work. Nothing I ever tried programming into it (referencing a dot-matrix printed newsletter) ever worked.

Edit: Oh, here it is on Wikipedia! Astrocade. I remember that name now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bally_Astrocade It was given to me as a kid by some relatives after it was discontinued.

Another edit... here's a little mood music for this thread. https://youtu.be/qFG_rNfgevk

[Kakiko]

I'm 33 (34 this year, yikes) and I definitely feel like I'm a "senior citizen" in this game. I have people in my FC who complain about how they're "almost 30, omg I'm going to be so old!" and I just sit there grinding my teeth (I'm also the FC lead, so I have been tempted to make a "Whippersnapper" rank just for them lol).

It's kind of a weird situation to be in, though. I find that when I do meet up with people around my own age, there's still a massive divide sometimes in where we each are in terms of life experiences/priorities. You either get people similar to you, or you get people who are very opposite of you and it's a bit frustrating. I do know that I sometimes (often) have trouble empathizing with people much younger than me because they're at a point in life that I no longer am and it's hard to mentally go back to that. It's also hard to empathize with people much older than me, too.

Gaming in your 30s is just weird overall I feel. I mean, I'm not going to stop, but it's still weird.

[Antonio_Xul]

From my experience most players seem to be in their late twenties, early thirties. The oldest player in my lil neck of the woods is in their late 60's, the oldest I've played with, late 70's. The youngest I've played with was fourteen *groan*. Myself, I'm -REDACTED, never ask a lady her age- So I think you are probably in good company! Anyways, I'm on Zalera trying to remember where I put that damned faerie...

Hmm....... I wonder we have the same friend. I’m also on Zalera and have a friend who told me she was a grandma and plays with her husband and her college aged children. Very cool person. Plays a nice looking Elezen.

In my FC we had a guy in his 70s who recently passed away. I had no idea he was that old! Sad. He will be missed.

I actually wonder if my FC knows how old my wife and I are. I act a fool all the time telling dirty jokes and just having a good time when they’re on and active. I don’t act my age. My wife and I actually met when I was 11 and she 14. She was my older sister’s best friend. We use to play Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II when she came over sometimes. We didn’t become a couple until years later into adulthood, but everything turned out great. Marry a gamer girl and you’ll be happy the rest of your life!

I’m actually a loner in game though, so I wish I had more people to chat with as well. My FC is kind of dead, but I refuse to leave it since I’ve been there since October 2013.

[Keddera_StormMoon]

Um, I'm turning 48 this year. And there's one other member of our FC that I'm pretty sure is older than me.

If your old, I must be ancient boss.

You need to go spend time on Shirley Curry's YouTube channel if you think you're an old gamer.

[Molniya]

In 1982, I took my first computer course in college. At that time I was finishing up an AS degree at a junior college, and the budget was limited. The course taught programming principles using BASIC and pascal. The computers were TRS-80s. Over the next few years as I worked on degrees in computer science and music composition (yeah, I know... but they really do have a great deal in common), I learned my way around such gems as DEC and VAX systems, and COBOL, Fortran, and assembly language. The first computer (PC) I bought myself was an Apple ][-c and I added a CPM card to it so I could do some real C programming.

I looked up the specs on the Z-80 chip just now... 2.5 to 8 MHz clock speed. 8-bit. Smokin'.

In college, when we could get time, we played Hack. It wasn't really multi-player, but you could communicate via the Unix mail system and would occasionally run across someone's gravestone and were able to read how they died and their stats at their time of death. For those who don't know, Hack was a rogue like game. When you died you died, you found out what all the mystery stuff you were carrying was, and you started over. Usually after at least whimpering in frustration. Sometimes screaming and waking up the TA.

Slightly later, I found myself standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. From that day to this, I've been gaming. I'm 57 years old, and the only thing I feel separates gamers of my age from 20-something gamers is 30-something years. I have met people my age that really do think that gaming is for "kids," but those people are typically leading stoic and boring little surface lives, and have their own "secrets" they keep from everyone else. In other words, people are just people, and really don't change a great deal as they age. They just learn to hide their habits better.

So whatever your age, keep on doing what makes you happy.

--Lightning Bunny

[BiffWellington]

I played Everquest II for a while. A friend of mine got me into his guild, where the leader was a 62-year-old woman. She'd be in her 70s now; I wonder if she's still playing?

One time, the three of us were out questing together. The leader and I were both playing ratonga, which are these little rat-people. Mine was male and hers was female, so we were greatly amusing ourselves by tossing /flirt emotes back and forth constantly. The spoken lines were pretty funny! And, hey, how often would we get to hear them otherwise? My friend (who is gay) was laughing, too, but also rolling his eyes and sighing the whole time.

[HappyHaunt]

Gaming in your 30s is just weird overall I feel. I mean, I'm not going to stop, but it's still weird.

The thing is I don't feel any different about gaming now than I did when I was younger; if you enjoy gaming I don't think people should tell you not to keep playing just because you're getting older.

I’m actually a loner in game though, so I wish I had more people to chat with as well.

I'm usually a solo player in MMOs until I get too lonely then look for a guild. Sometimes this can be years though.

Very sorry to hear about the person in your FC though; that must have been very sad.

Um, I'm turning 48 this year. And there's one other member of our FC that I'm pretty sure is older than me.

Outside of gaming I don't see anyone younger than 80 to be very old personally. Its just when video games are concerned people tend to think you'll stop playing them when getting to a certain age... which is... strange.

So whatever your age, keep on doing what makes you happy.

I agree, thanks for the advice!

I played Everquest II for a while.

Never played it; heard a lot about it being good though.

Also I didn't expect this thread to get so much attention.

[BiffWellington]

Everquest II is a fun game, but it's extremely group-focused. By the time you level past the 20s, you'll pretty much start needing a group to do anything.

[Ceridwenae]

Um, I'm turning 48 this year. And there's one other member of our FC that I'm pretty sure is older than me.

If your old, I must be ancient boss.

You need to go spend time on Shirley Curry's YouTube channel if you think you're an old gamer.

I mean, all these kids these days! In their 30s, feeling old and venerable indeed! Oof. Reminds of When Harry Met Sally: "...And I'm going to be 40!!" "When?" "Someday!!"

I am 40 mind, I really have no place to say anything. XD

I did love the petition to get Shirley Curry into TES VI, mind. That lady is a legend.

Also, I remember 20 or so years ago, I asked a woman in my then-workplace what it was like to be 42. It seemed so far off! She just turned to me and said, "I feel exactly the same inside as I did when I was 16". I can now attest to that. I think the fact that we keep on playing games such as this actually help to keep us a little younger-at-heart. It's not a bad thing at all.