Gaming and getting older.
Just started up the first Fallout and i'm in the character screen right now. I remember back when i played it the first time when i was 8 years old, i would look at the default age of the character (25) and say "Hah, he's an old man!"
And now i'm looking at it today, thinking "That's my age..."
Does playing older games make you notice your age? Do you remember playing the same games 15+ years ago? Is there any difference when you play them now?
And would be nice if you could mention your age when you first played a game, and when you last played it.
And now i'm looking at it today, thinking "That's my age..."
Does playing older games make you notice your age? Do you remember playing the same games 15+ years ago? Is there any difference when you play them now?
And would be nice if you could mention your age when you first played a game, and when you last played it.
11
Comments
I was playing videogames since I was 5-6. Something like that. I'm still gamer now, but luckily enough, I spend less and less time on gaming. Why? Because gaming has seriously damaged my life. I cannot initiante contact with other people easily, I have no girlfriend and the worst part is, I regret that I've lost so much time thanks to gaming. You know, I could like, going out more often, focus more on finding my passion and going along with it. But now, due to all hours of life I lost, my dream to become freelance digital artist is extremely difficult.
All because instead of developing myself artistically, I played freaking Rayman when I was younger.
Nowadays, I'm still playing games, sure. Just in lesser ammount. Also, I'm not stick-in-the-mud guy with "one true gaming rule" disposition.
Putting too much time into gaming can ruin your life. I am deadly serious.
I was about 12 when my best friend's brother started DMing. He wouldn't let us join his group so we played on our own with my brother and her little sister. That was the basic set, I think.
I gamed pretty heavily when I was a kid, and an adult, and basically my entire life. It's served me well since I now make a living at it.
I'm the same age as you, and I've poured probably a bajillion hours into super-long RPGs like Final Fantasy, Pokemon, and of course Baldur's Gate. I dream of becoming a fantasy novelist, an ambition that feels harder to achieve and farther away today than it ever did when I was younger. But the thing is, without all that exposure to those games, and books, and media, and social interactions with people I love and even people I hate, I wouldn't have the creative foundations for storytelling that I have now. Everything that we imagine and experience in this world is often reflected in the work that we produce. As Neil Gaiman put it, life is our source material.
Your dream of becoming a freelance digital artist doesn't have anything to do with you playing games when you were younger. In fact, it's more likely that such colorful games like Rayman gave you the inspiration needed to pursue that path. What matters now isn't the time you've lost, but the time you still have and what you do with it. Life's too short for regrets, and you won't get anything done thinking about all the things you "should" have done. Instead, relish in the good memories and let them inspire you!
Okay, so that was a joke, but the point is that we're still young enough to accomplish our goals. Hell, I know middle-aged men and women who had gone back to school and gotten a degree very recently. They now do what they've always wanted. When friends keep telling you how much of a baby you are despite being in your twenties, trust me, you're not old.
Speaking of The Elder Scrolls, the game I've played most in my life is TES3: Morrowind. I first started playing it back when I was, oh, 8? 9? Possibly slightly younger or older, but around that time. I usually play it at least once a year, (not to completion by any means, but I'll make a new character and mess around for five or ten hours) and I'm now 20. I guess I haven't really thought of my age when I play it, but it's interesting to think that I've played that game for, oh, 10, 11, even 12 years.
Life is short, and da**ed if there aren't a lot of things I still want to do, but video games will always be a part of my life. Whether as inspiration, relaxation, or a method of connecting with my future children. I can't wait for when my kids are old enough for me to show them my past through video games. Games like Majora's Mask, Morrowind, and yes, Baldur's Gate, among many many others.
Games CAN be detrimental to your life, but so can sports, sex, reading, eating, tv, or any of the other things we love. It's all about balance, and finding the things in your life that you're willing to sacrifice for. Do I wish there were times I'd done other things than what I did? Well sure, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen, and now I can merely do what I can with my present and remember the good things of the past. And that applies to all of life, not just games.
So don't beat yourself up over a "wasted youth". Remember fondly the good times you had, and strive for what you want now.
Lets be honest a minute. @O_Bruce is right. Too much gaming can ruin people's lives
Its a fact. I've seen it happen. You've seen it happen.
One of my best friends in college was pre-Med. Stayed up all night the day before an Orgo exam because he was addicted to WoW. Two people in Japan and South Korea literally died because they gamed at an internet cafe for so long. They played games so much that they died. Died. Addictions ruin lives, and games can be very addicting. They are fun, they are easy to get and they provide escape. That makes them great fun... but it also makes them dangerous.
Yet any addiction can do that, and gaming in moderation is great. It does lend itself to binging more than most pastimes due to accessibility but they are still awesome and can be an excellent hobby. But there is also the side that Bruce mentioned about its effect on your social life. That is real. There is a danger of becoming a shut in. When you can have fun int he virtual world, and are allowed to make mistakes and not suffer real life consequences, it can seriously stunt your growth and confidence. Why go out with the fear of failure when you can just chill in Mordor or whatever all day and still have a little fun?
That shut-in culture can also lead to some other bad consequences, mostly in fostering anti-social behavior. Not the "I don't want to interact" or "I get nervous around girls" anti-social but the "can't play well with others" anti-social. The stereotype of gamers as being rude and overly competitive in trivialities may not always be accurate, but there is more than enough truth there for people to recognize it. This is particularly rue with online games like Halo or the WWII games that people play, where they are so used to spewing cruelty anonymously over the internet that such behavior seeps into their real-life habits. Thi sort of thing happens in all sorts of entertainment, and there have been problems in other media (hooliganism in sports, violence related to music) but it seems like gamers are among the worst offenders. Especially on the internet there seems to be a lot of hostility when it comes to disagreements over games.
Now, I was never a big gamer. I "binge game" every few months with a game that I've already played (too old to try new things... I'm 26! I stick with Infinity Engine, Heroes of Might and Magic and an occasional Age of Empries). However, even I have experienced some of these negatives. Last week I was like "Sorry babe, I can't talk right now I need to kill the Mongols". Definitely addictive and oftentimes frustrating when things don't go your way!
But at the same time you can definitely enjoy games without going nuts, even when you are older. Getting older makes it difficult to play games and still be a responsible adult, but as a small pastime theya re awesome and usually very convenient. You can even play with your kids when you have them, or play while looking after them when they are younger. One of my friends told me the average gamer today is like 28. That initially worried me but then I thought of how many successful people I knew who still played videogames despite being lawyers, doctors or engineers. It was quite a lot.
@O_Bruce dude you are only 22. Thats like four years younger than me. You have plenty of time to fix your problems, and they are nowhere near as bad as you think. Videogames might have been a problem but they haven't ruined your life at all, and probably benefited you in many ways you haven't considered. Especially in digital art for many of the reasons Nonnahswriter and Elrandir said. If you can enjoy them without going overboard, and try to get out more, then I don't think they are a problem.
I never really played RPGs when I was a kid, I was more interested in military flight simulators...I can't even begin to remember how many hours I spent behind Gunship 2000!!
It's a hobby, it's a chance to feel like "living" in the fantasy world for a while.
Of course, the amount of hours when we play becomes lower. We have to cook, we have to go shopping, we have to work and we have many other things to do. But it's still fine to do a multiplayer run through BG with a PC and a laptop in one room.
We can read a book together, we can watch a movie, we can walk in the park, we can go to the theatre. And we still very much can just stay at home and explore a few dungeons.
So, to me, gaming still continues with getting older.
Edit: typos
As of now, I mostly play Dota 2 and occasionally make a run through the classic RPGs. However, my business has to do with gaming, so what do you know, even though I don't play as much as I did, gaming is still a huge part of me, and will keep being such, as that is what made me who I am.
Sure, I'm 22 and that's still young age, I know. Thing is, in a year and half, I'll probably finish my studies and I'll have to start making a living for myself. Poland, an excuse of a country I live in, is way different from your western standards when we are talking about making a living. If you think that you can live a dignified life when doing the simple jobs for a living there, then you're deadly wrong.
I'm psychology student, and after graduation I'll have the problem of finding a place to work in, due to the fact of how much people are actually graduating as a psychologists. I also cannot be a coach without practical experience. And, here where my wasted time kicks in, I cannot dream of starting to earn money as a digital artist, because my skill level is far cry (no gaming reference intended) from what it need to be. Did I mention the fact that digital artists often have problems with finding clients? No? So I'm stating that now.
What will probably happen is me having a shitty job, and trying to improve my skills in my free time in hope I will get out of that hole one day. Assuming I'll have the energy to do so. That's not even negative thinking, that's simply just reality of living in Poland. Now, do you understand why I am little concerned?
Also, @fanscale . Stop playing diagnostician, it's more difficult than you think it is.
Utter bollocks. Poland isn't central Africa. You are a EU citizen, and as such you can freely move around one of the world's largest and wealthiest economies, and yet you have the nerve to whine about how bad your situation is.
Just continue talking about gaming and getting older, without going personal.
I'm serious about this, guys. All your posts are in the politics thread now. Further comments here that are not on topic will be deleted.
First game I remember playing (probably played some Amiga games before that though) is Super Mario World, which is easily one of the best platformers ever made, and still a good game today. It was just prior to starting school, so the year I turned 7. The skin started flaking off our hands from playing that and Street Fighter II. Totally worth it.
Not quite sure when I first played Baldur's Gate, but it may have been when I was 13. Regardless, BG is the game that made me love playing Mages which is now usually my main class in just about every RPG that allows it.
As for gaming too much... you can do anything "too much", not just gaming. Any hobby taken to an extreme can be damaging to your life. It's not really for anyone else to decide though and gaming isn't a bigger problem than anything else you can be doing. Personally I have a bit over 13000 confirmed hours of gaming on pc alone. That seems like forever right? It's 541 days. Turning 29 years old this year which is roughly 10585 days. That's 5%. Suddenly 13K hours doesn't seem that much, there's lots of people who spend more than 5% of their time on their hobbies.
I must be old...
By the time I got my first home computer I already owned my own home (bond repayments to make, never-ending list of things to fix), a successful career (12 hour working days, on call at weekends, expected to fly anywhere I was needed at the drop of a hat) and a string of ex-girlfriends who in later years came with kids as part of the package (parenting, even as a substitute parent, is exhausting in itself), so I simply put gaming in my list of "things I can do when I've got some spare time" along with things like reading, listening to music, fishing, and skydiving.
There is so much 'stuff' to do in life that you have to prioritise, set yourself goals, and allocate your time accordingly.
It's supposedly always been around, but only has intensified enough in the past 50 years or so to draw academic attention because of the ways in which human growth and development have been influenced by living in the late Information Age, with the internet, the emerging "global village", social media, related economic trends, demographics, and yes, even things like video game addiction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis
As for my own relationship with gaming, I'm afraid I can't be a role model of balance and perspective about it. I played arcade video games during my teen years, and continued playing arcade games through college. (This was during the 1980's.)
I then put gaming aside throughout my 20's as I focused on trying to build a public school teaching career and finding a mate, as well as a heck of a lot of partying and just having fun. Part of my own quarter life crisis was that, after years of education and training, I discovered that I really hated public school teaching. So I tried all kinds of odd jobs in filing, typing, and data entry, then finally got an opportunity to try private music teaching, discovering that I could at least tolerate it and sometimes enjoy it, and gradually becoming able to eke out a living doing that.
Around age 30, I started to miss all the fun I had had with arcade games when I was younger, so I decided to try a Sega Genesis CD console to see if I would like it. Most of the games for it were kind of "meh", but I found one that looked like D&D, which I had really enjoyed playing during high school and college, called "Dark Wizard". I instantly fell in love with it, and got hooked on it.
After I was done with Dark Wizard, I wanted more. Games for computers were just starting to be a more mainstream thing, so I got the only fantasy one I could find, that looked like it might play like Dark Wizard - Heroes of Might and Magic 1. At first, I didn't like it as much, but gradually I got hooked on it, too. From there I went to Might and Magic 6, then Baldur's Gate, then Might and Magic 7, Shadows of Amn, Might and Magic 8, HoMM 2 and 3, etc., etc.
By the time I was in my mid-thirties, I started getting very burned out on the whole dating scene and trying to find a mate. There just wasn't anyone who had interests like mine. Most guys I met bored me to death, honestly. Dating and trying to find a mate is complicated and difficult for anyone, but is especially so for gay people in a lot of ways that I won't go into detail about here.
I got tired of working out and running all the time trying to be good-looking, so I started to let myself go physically. I started to drink more, enjoying drinking while playing games. I finally started to enjoy being by myself and playing games way more than I enjoyed being out around people. I let relationships go, and started avoiding human contact as much as possible.
I am now turning 50 years old this summer. I am content with where I've wound up. My family are all passed away, so games are kind of my lifeline to get pleasure from whatever time I have left to live. I make my tale sound like a really sad one, but I'm basically okay. I just doubt most people would want to follow the path I followed, because it's a lonely one. I guess you could take mine as a cautionary tale to not let games take over your life.
There are a lot of other factors that influenced the choices I made to wind up where I am, and my love of gaming is only one of them. Like I said, I've learned to be content with what I have. But computer games are now my main source of pleasure in life, for good or bad. I'm okay with it.
Compared to being 8 years old and playing Fallout for the first time, i kind of feel a bit old right now. And the idea for this thread came from, when you put your age in Fallout, 25 is default. And it never struck me as anything special before now, when i AM 25 years old.
Another example is Final Fantasy 8. Back then i could throw myself into the story and the world, because i was somewhat around their age myself. Now I'm thinking "Teenagers" while before i was thinking "Squall you're AWESOME AND NOT AT ALL ANTI SOCIAL!".
At least over here (Scandinavia) jobs change with time, some years ago there were too few teachers, now there are too many, and with the reform in Denmark we'll probably end up seeing too few teachers again in a soon future.
If social work or psychology is what he wants to do, then that is what he should study for.
Realistically, there is high chance to get some kind of job after graduation. The thing is, and some people will never get this, people have more needs than just eating and sleeping. Searching for a job that will enable you to self-actualization is the real deal I'm striving for. Working for the rest of your life in a job you hate without said self-actualization is a utterly worthless life.
Just to no get off-topic too much, while I can agree that videogames can be inspiration to strive for certain jobs (such as writer, musican artists) they aren't giving you competences to actually do these jobs. Playing games ought to be pasttime, relaxation, instead of main activity. Especially when your imagined career would need a LOT of work.
I remember playing ZORK way back when THAT was cutting edge. I grew up playing games as far back as Adventure for the Atari. I remember one game in particular that was this "Infinite level Dungeon" where the walls were green wire frame. I can't remember what it was called, but every once in a while this elf would find you and 'Like your body', thus healing you up.
I remember playing the original Gold Box Pool of Radiance. I had to really reconfigure my PC to make it work. This was before hard drives so we had to change disks in different zones. These were the really big 5.25 inch floppy disks (anyone remember them?). I had to force the computer to use system memory as RAM. It was quite a challenge, but that eventually lead me to my current profession.
I've seen the development of video games almost since the beginning. I remember when the original Unreal came out and how awesome that was. I remember playing Doom with the 'Alien' mod. I was a big fan of Duke Nukem right up to the point where I realized that WASN'T Bruce Campbell's voice. Then I stopped liking it.
I still play today although my gaming hours are much abbreviated. No longer can I spend all night playing a game and then go to work the next day. No more power weekends in front of my computer. All gone, but not forgotten.
I remember seeing the pre-release demo of Baldur's gate at Gen Con back when it was in Milwaukee. And I remember not liking it. My how that changed. I remember Fallout and playing a character named "None".
Ah the good old days.