Welcome !

Welcome to Middle - Aged Gamer, my journal of life as a 40 year old former videogame geek who can no longer even pretend to be hardcore.

I was there when Pong hit the scene, I was in the arcade playing Centipede while Journey and Loverboy were blaring on the jukebox, my first console was an Odyssey 2 and my first computer was a Commodore VIC 20, I spent the second half of the eighties slogging through RPGs on the Commodore 64, I spent the much of the nineties on the cusp of console greatness from the Turbografx 16 through the first Playstation, I logged into Ultima Online during its unbelievable early days, and played for seven years, also becoming a very active part of the online community that talks about the game.

Those days are behind me now - I can't get into MMORPGs at all since the shadow of Everquest and World of Warcraft made the genre about as dull as watching paint dry, but for some reason as popular as TV wrestling. I can't afford a massive new LCD or plasma TV, or an XBox 360, or a Playstation 3. I can afford a Nintendo Wii but like most people right now I can't find one. I've played first person shooters to death but still got all I need from that genre with Doom, I see no need for another turn-based RPG with hundreds of numbers and stats to watch over, and I don't want a driving game unless it's another Mario Kart.

What I do now - well, it's toned down and that's fine. I work for a living and have a wonderful fiancee' which takes up most of my time, but I still want to game - it's in my blood and always will be. So I try to have a game that interests me available, plus a nice-sized library of older games I can revisit at my leisure, and when the free time presents itself, I enjoy gaming. Not on the level of the elite hardcore that stand above us all with their state-of-the-art killer titles that they play online on their gargantuan TV sets while speaking into microphones to their teammates and opponents - just as an older player who still gets a thrill out of exploration, puzzle solving, and a little dash of action.

I suspect that as my generation has aged there are many like me out there - gamers who were once hardcore but now have not the time nor devotion they once had, but still like videogames enough to make the time for them when they can. They know what they like to play, they don't care how the guy at EB games looks at them when they buy it, and they like to wax nostalgic about the games of yesteryear.

That's what I intend to do with this blog - write about what I'm playing, about what's going on with the new stuff from an old timer's viewpoint, and about anything else that interests me in relation to games and geek culture. I hope someone reads it, and perhaps word will get out that there is no shame in no longer being hardcore. The point of gaming is to, after all, have fun.