Players; how old are you? at least in your state of mind.

[TheSlider]

Some of your stories are interesting and I could almost see myself in parts of them. It was as if we shared the same experiences at different times and places. Fascinating. Thank you Niatka for the topic.

I'm 36 I think. Stopped counting long ago as I really don't care but my family still send me messages thanks to Facebook reminding them.

We've moved quite a bit when I was a kid, Portugal, Australia, England, France, ... As such, I always felt a bit like a stranger to friends and some family members but I try to keep contact nowadays.
I've been in contact with video games since little and I have played games on NES, Amstrad, Master System and then on PC with a celeron 400Mhz running windows 98. I think I was 12.
PC's have been something of a fascination to me and I took it personally to try to master the one we got at home back then. I didn't understand much and the pro magazines my mother would bring home were mostly incomprehensible to me. I still read them over and over and each time I would understand a little bit about a peculiar subject (programming in Scheme, image processing, batch scripting, windows settings.... It was weird and mesmerising.
At the time I also got to playing a bunch of games recommended and provided by by an uncle as he worked in a retail store and many of these were being dumped for some reason. I was not disapointed (Need for speed 3, half life, Final fantasy 8, diablo, Fallout..., X wing vs Tie fighter ) . I though PC games were at the pinnacle of what was possible in terms of gameplay and graphics and no other hardware could compete.

Fast forward 2001-2004 :
New PC. A Pentium 4 with a decent GPU. I got into emulation and discovered a huge library of 8 and 16bit console games from the GB to the Genesis. So many good stuff there. I killed my parents internet bill by downloading a ton of roms from newsgroups. Pirated PC games were also coming through the post office as I exchanged burned discs by mail or at school. I also got my hands on the HL2 Beta that way... That was a huge slap on my face as I had never experienced a game like that before. Also seeing it in that state made me want to get into game dev.

The Dreamcast was being discontinued. Most resellers put huge price drops on the games. I came back home with a cubic box full of second hand hardware and software. Sonic Adventure, Shenmue, Dead or Alive, Soulcalibur, MSR, Space channel 5, Phantasy star Online (killed the internet bill again with that one but then the PC version came out a bit afterwards) we finally got broadband internet around that time.

Fast forward 2009-2019 :
Graduated as a Dev and then entered a school dedicated to the game business but 6th months in a company offered me a job as a flash dev and animator. I got into Web dev which was a new world. I did build Web pages before as a hobby but doing it professionally was something else. I was basically a one man army there and redesigned everything in that company from the ground up including the LAN, the online and local services the website front and back ends plus all the graphic design. When Apple dropped Flash support, I got into Javascript, SVG and Canvas and converted everything we had just to prepare in case our clients choose to use Apple products (never happened, they stuck to microsoft and IE 6 if you can believe it). Still, that helped in the end when we opened some pro package services to the public.

Gaming back then was more a hobby as I also started a repair shop in the basement. I fixed laptops, tv's and consoles mainly for personal use. I stoped consuming everything and anything when I got a job but as my GF was in the gaming industry as an artist, I got to enjoy many of her creations and discover the indie scene. The early years of Indie devs on console were brilliant and I'm glad it's just as strong today if not stronger.

Since 2019 :
New home, new job, new PC and newborn.
I spend more time using my hands to build, repair and take care of the little one than to play games But I still take time after everyone is asleep to enjoy in some late night excursions. My PC and console library has inflated. I feel the need to sell most of the collection in case we move again. It's been sitting in boxes since the last one anyway.
Anyway, CP2077 was expected but I didn't want to jump into the unpolished version so I waited for the right time. I'm glad I did. I took my sweet time to fully enjoy it despite some of the bugs and I can't wait for the next update or expansion.

 

[John_Russell]

Now I don't feel so out of place here. I'm 63 going on 24 and have been in computeres and gaming since the late 70's. Started out playing 3D Tic-Tac-Toe on a computer (time shared) where there were no monitors, only teletypes. Games were loaded via a puched paper tape...

Similar here. I'm 62 ... I was first introduced to video games in the early 70's. My Dad was a foreman at a weekly newspaper in a small town in Illinois and also was a partner in a pool hall. One day a vendor came in and talked him into leasing a then new arcade style video game which turned out to be so popular he took out one of the pool tables (moved it to our house which was cool) and bought 3 arcade video games. A coupe of years later we moved to Iowa where my Father was a partner in a dairy/cattle/hog equipment supply store and while I was in high school (1976 and 1977) I got a partial Altair kit which was the PCBs and a couple of ROMS and ASICs and populated the rest of the boards from "floor sweepings" my uncle who worked for IBM got for me. Monitors were way too expensive but my Father was also a Ham radio operator and had a teletype machine he got when working at the newspaper that was converted to radioteletype and with the help of my uncle we converted it back and adapted it for the readout for the Altair. A couple of years later I was playing in a band and one of my bandmate's brothers had a TRS-80 and he got me interested enough to buy one. Then it was C-64's and Apple IIe Amigas and IBM PC compatibles. My Father's business went under during the Farm Crisis of the 80's but I was still servicing some specialized dairy equipment at Iowa State University (My Grandfather was head of electrical maintenance there from 1955-1971 and my Father and both uncle graduated from there) One of these devices was made by a German company (Westphalia) and would adjust the vacuum levels of a milking machine based on the flow rate which allows one man to milk several cows at once without risking leaving the milker on too long. There were only a handful of people in the States that understood how they worked and how to adjust/calibrate them and what the university wanted to do was tie them into a computer so they could log them (They were basically experimenting with different feed formulations to see which gave the most bang for the buck) The company that was providing the computers and support was a then startup called Gateway Computers then located in a converted metal machine shed on a family farm in western Iowa. I impressed one of the owners so much he hired my as a component compatibility tester. Back then there was no Internet and most computer parts were sourced from a bi-weekly trade magazine the size of a NYC phone book called Computer Shopper and the term "IBM Compatible" was more of a marketing term than a reality. So my job was taking boxes of computer parts, motherboards, video and sound cards, memory, modems, etc. and building systems to see which components were truly compatible and which worked best together and I'd send that data upstream to the engineers who would design finished systems. Our reputation at the time was "The most compatible computers on the market" and unlike most of the competition we guaranteed they would work and be truly 100% IBM compatible and we couldn't make them fast enough. After a couple of years one of the founders ( Ted Waitt ) decided I was wasted talent and offered me full tuition to Iowa State for Electronics Engineering even knowing that I'd would be moving on after graduation. He also advised me to invest in Microsoft in the early 90's while I was still in college and over the next couple of years I acquired 1000 shares at an average cost of $1.25/share and after several stock splits I sold it in 2006 and made almost half a million which I used to pay off my mortgage, both my vehicles and my boat and eventually used the rest to start my own engineering and consultancy company specialized in building control systems (HVAC, lighting, fire and theft alarms, etc.) Never stopped playing computer games and was a beta tester for Papyrus Racing games (NASCAR Racing 2 through NASCAR Racing 2003 and Grand Prix) I also ran a NASCAR Racing server and league for 5 years but eventually gave that up after separating my left shoulder in late 2006 which made it impossible to crank on a force feedback steering wheel for hours at a time. Kind of got out of gaming for a few years but still played games like GTA and Saints Row but then started getting back into it when I got a copy of AC Black Flag in 2015 and eventually AC Origins started getting me interested in RPGs again (I had played mainly text based ones in the 80's like The Bard's Tale series) I had heard of Witcher 3 but never actually started playing the game until early 2018 which also got me interested in Modding games again (I had built Doom and Quake dungeons, tracks for NASCAR Racing and modded GTA games) Modding Witcher 3 and my new found love for RPGs eventually led to to games like Skyrim and modding it, putting together builds with over 500 mods in less than a year after buying the game in February 2020. Still I'm more interested in RPGs with swords and bows than futuristic or space RPGs with guns which is probably why Cyberpunk and Mass Effect just doesn't grab me the way Witcher 2 and 3 or AC Odyssey or Skyrim does.

 

[CEAN0]

I'm 56 but look like 40 and physically and mental I'm i feel like 30

Have been playing PC games both professional and for personal enjoyment for almost 30 years now.

It is like i have always been saying...
- Playing PC games is not just for fun, it's a lifestyle!

 

[DNMR2K5]

Am in my mid-fifties, and mentally I'm fluctuating between 18-30 yrs old!

I first started gaming in the late 70's when we got the Magnavox Odyssey 2 (Far superior to atari! ) but I didn't do as much gaming 'cause I have extreme ADHD that as a kid, sent me flying in every direction except down, but I quit gaming in 1980; some years later I started hanging out with hippies, metalheads, and bikers and was introduced to the magnificently wonderful world of Pot&Acid!

Because of my near-crippling naivete and extreme energy, I was easily influenced by the fabled comic: The Fabulous Furry Freak brothers and decided that my life's goal was to go out into the world and join a hippy commune with my newfound fellow vagabonds that I was hanging out with on a daily basis and we decided to make the long exodus to the grand epicenter of all hippiedom: the national rainbow gathering; that way we could join up with like-minded people and establish our hippitopia!

So off we went, in a refurbished old school bus with only the emergency brake to stop our bus's bloated girth with six seats between us and the contents of an entire house crammed to the roof! So imagine driving down new jersey in a 35,000-ton clunker with no real breaks causing traffic jams, then driving up and down hills in the foggy roads of Virginia in a vehicular behemoth with visibility being only an arm or two's length while the driver is straddling the emergency brake!

Unfortunately, (Or considering the company I kept; fortunately!) I ended up setting off on my own due to our group's two street toughs causing some serious, (Maybe deadly, I left before anything went down!) conflict with the locals of the small Tennessee town where our belabored bloated corpse of a bus finally died, so off I was to finish our goal of going to the gathering, nearly 20 yrs old, completely naive, with a sign that simply read "Twin falls" in rainbow colors about to set off into the unknown...

I had the luck of the devil when I received my first and only ride that took me from Nashville all the way to twin falls Idaho where the rainbow gathering was being held, so off we went with his shit-tier weed that did not even get us high and the endless days of his pointless yammering we finally made it to the gathering, where I completely lost my idolized view of hippiedom, and the silly dream of living high, and hippy-free on a commune!

Now, this was the national gathering mind you, and nothing in my life had prepared me for the sight of literally thousands of textbook card-carrying half-naked hippies, communeers, literal cult leaders, criminals, undercover cops, fashionista hippies, and actual honest folk that literally set up the camp, dug the latrines, cooked the food/gathering water and the massive herculean task of cleaning up after thousands of hippies... I was wise enough to follow their lead and work with them, as well as party my ass off!

I had an incredible time, and after 3 months when it was over, I got a ride from them to Reno Nevada where I truly lost my naivete!

As I was truly on my own in a city where I knew no one and had no money, no food, and only the pack on my back; so after many failed attempts to look for work as a road-weary, hadn't-had-a-proper-shower-in-3-months-vagabond, no one would hire me, (Surprise, surprise!) so I set off again into the unknown, I had the luck of the devil again when I finally got my first and only ride after twenty-fuckin-miles from the long road from Carson city, to a small town's homeless/welfare office in Moab that got me a bus ticket to a shit town in California!

To make a long story short, I ended up leaving that town for a nice college town in Humboldt Co., that is where I finally found and reunited with gaming, I was 25 at this point during the height of the SNES/Genesis era, so then came to my love of console videogames, I had quite the massive collection when I moved from California to Seattle, and after 7 years, lost them all during the dot-com crash...

but not all was lost as I had secured the first PC that I ever got at the age of 33 for $400 from one of the employees of the still-unfinished building of a failed dot-com where I was a custodian...

I finally left Seattle for Tennesse as their 5% unemployment was much more attractive than being homeless in a city with no jobs, new buildings and condo scaffolding was still dotting the cityscape, and a mass exodus out of the city, (But a very, generous welfare system, which is why I left as I'd still be there to this day!) so off I went, again...

The plan was to go back to my home state once I got some money saved up, and that was damn near 20 years ago, so here I am on my very first custom-built PC, gaming and typing out a large chunk of my life's story to people I never met face-to-face, and enjoying my life as a game collector/hobbyist!

 

[Aedus_Amaterasu]

Older then those whose footsteps are long vanished.

 

[Feline_Witcher]

I'd say my state of mind age is the same as my actual age: a millenial who doesn't really understand the current generation

 

[FoerOmyop]

I am male, 54 years old, have three teenage sons (two of which are avid computer gamers), and have been playing Witcher 3 Wild Hunt for three months now. The only other RPG I've played before this is Detroit: Become Human, which I found disappointing.

Growing up, I was a big fan of D&D and loved being Dungeon Master and creating my own modules. My biggest complaint with computer RPGs is that none of them have been anything like the IRL D&D gaming experience. With the table game you could do anything, and go anywhere. The only thing limiting the adventure was the DM's versatility, imagination and preparation.

I love fantasy and sci fi, and enjoyed reading the Witcher books. I think CD Projekt did a fantastic job turning the fictional world of the books into a video RPG. The graphics are stunning, the story is immersive, and I love Geralt. This is the closest I've seen any computer RPG come to in-person D&D. If this could be turned into a multi-player gaming experience -- with a group of adventures each controlled by a real person -- that would finally take D&D fully into the virtual world.

I'm a big fan of CD Projekt and have actually bought shares in it. I want the company to succeed and am very much looking forward to playing Cyberpunk 2077, once the bugs have been ironed out and I upgrade my PC.

I laughed when Facebook changed their name to Meta. If any company could create a metaverse, it would be CD Projekt, not Zuckerberg's social media abomination.

Post automatically merged: Nov 9, 2021

I'm 65. I was 25 when I first actually saw a computer, in 1980; I was 25 when I wrote my first game on one. By the time I was 30, I was a research academic in artificial intelligence. By the time I was 35, I was CEO of a company developing artificial intelligence systems.

And yes, it's mostly been downhill from their. Like so many tech startups, both that one and the next one I started went bust. And I discovered that I much prefer (and am much better at) writing software than at managing companies. I'm now mostly retired, and have a small farm, where I keep cattle. Software, now, is more my hobby than my work.

But... aren't we all still eighteen, somewhere deep inside?

Managing is hard. It's a skill that most people don't realize is a skill.

At one point I expanded the company I now run and hired four employees. I wasn't good at managing and I ended going into the red, laying everybody off, and spending the next two years digging myself out of debt.

Now the company is only me. I do have employees, but they're part-time, and independent contractors. Ninety percent of the work I do myself.

Post automatically merged: Nov 9, 2021

I'm 56 but look like 40 and physically and mental I'm i feel like 30

Have been playing PC games both professional and for personal enjoyment for almost 30 years now.

It is like i have always been saying...
- Playing PC games is not just for fun, it's a lifestyle!

Did you play D&D when growing up and, if so, what computer RPGs out today would you say come closest to the table-top D&D experience?

Post automatically merged: Nov 9, 2021

Oh sure ask me a question like this one, fine: I'm 66 going on 25. And I still have my Atari 2600 and it still works along with my Ti 99 / 4A...which also still works. Anyone (from the last century) remember the Sinclair ZX81?

In the late '70s, early '80s, I was living in Italy and the first computer I got was a Sinclair. It may have been a ZX81. I can't remember. But I remember it didn't have a QWERTY keyboard. It was in alphabetical order.

 

[Serellious]

Mid 40's here. As they say, you're only as old as you feel, and there are days when I can put in a 48-hour gaming session no problem like I did during my LAN days, and then there are the "other" days when all I want to do is crawl in a hole and sleep for a week, lol.

 

[CEAN0]

Did you play D&D when growing up and, if so, what computer RPGs out today would you say come closest to the table-top D&D experience?

Post automatically merged: Nov 9, 2021

Never played any D&D my self so it's hard for me to say what RPGs is similar to that game
But if i am taking a game series that i have played and modded for years so is it TES "The Elder Scrolls" series, that i think remind of D&D in some point.

 

[Sunsibar]

41 years old here according to papers. No idea how old I look or how old I feel. I just feel like myself Other people around me are somehow getting older and underaged kids seem to drive trucks nowadays, but I just keep being me.

I guess I never gave much thought about how people should act at "my age", or never experienced any "age crisis". I have always just done me stuff. Which has probably caused several conflicts and other crisis during my life, since other people never quite understood how someone doesn't do/look/think like this/that. My guidelines in life are pretty much: don't be an ass, take responsibility of your actions, always do your job properly and after that... do whatever you like.

I started gaming somewhere in late 80s or early 90s, when one of my friends got NES, other got C64 and I got Amiga 500. Super Mario, Turtles and Summer/Winter Games are probably the most memorable ones from the early years. Now that I think back, Witcher 3 is still my all time top favorite game. After that there are, in most memorable games category, in no specific order, games like Final Fantasy X, Bravely Default series and Horizon Zero Dawn. Currently waiting for upcoming games like God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Zero Dawn 2.

Most played platforms (that I have actually owned or still own) during these years have been NES, Amiga 500, PSP, 3DS, PS 1/2/3/4 (waiting for 5 to be available in shops), Switch, Wii, Wii-u, Xbox (the actual first one), Xbox 360 and PC.

When I get old enough to retire, I hope to be like my mom. 74 years old and still playing videogames

 

[Aethral]

Dis many (holds up hands irl to show the ammount on my fingers)

 

[FunkyDunkyWorld]

I'm 28 biologically, psichologically around 40.

 

[Sazook]

I'm 64 but I don't look a day over 63. I played Pong when it was brand new. The first game I got hooked on was Tempest, and those were some graphics, definitely a first person shooter.

I was in a trade school in 1981 and we were the first class to have a whole room full of the first IBM pc's. The operating system was DOS 1.0 which you had to boot with a 160K 5 1/4 floppy. Once it booted then we would put in another 5 1/4 that had BASICA. The first program I wrote was one that drew a random line on the screen along with a random tone with a random length of time. It would draw 500 lines then clear and start over, and over, and over. Then EGA monitors came out and I colorized it. Random colors of course. If I remember correctly, BASICA was written by Bill Gates himself. Thanks to DOSBox I can still run it to this day.

The first IBM PC's cost $3500 back then which put them out of reach until 386 machines came out. Once 386's came out you could get 286 machines for free and with that, Windows Solitare. At that point there was no looking back.

My first big game was the original Red Faction and I just loved that game. I didn't like the Red Faction sequels but I enjoyed the Far Crys, Crysis series, Fallout3. Mass Effect, Microsoft Office (because I had to work), the sprint car games, iracing.............

 

[freault]

63 this year, been playing video games for about 50 years, i 've played some amazing games and not so amazing games.

 

[MartineDee]

No exact age from me. I am about 40 yo Quaker.

How old am I really? The music I listen was commonly for 20-30 yos when I was that age. I do sports, things that get under 30 yos pant and drop.

 

[AdrianPupe]

35, gaming all the way

 

[ianann]

Got 40 in December, playing since the C64 Era, besides PC Gaming SNES and PS1 in the early 90s - mostly long-term RPGs/ Action RPGs like Witcher, TES etc., I am into Music, Guitar playing, RC modelling and sports as well if that even matters.

 

[SteelDragon2050]

Physically i'm 39. Mentally....well....that depends on who you ask Been playing games since the mid-late 80's. First console was the NES. Been playing games ever since.

 

[The_Blacks]

I'm a few years older but I feel like I'm 18

 

[Codexsas]

It feels like around 30's or 40s