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We're mostly all gamers. That gives us something in common. We're competitive. We like to win. We like to play. We like to immerse ourselves from time to time in a cracking good console or PC game and detach ourselves from our surroundings ala Sony's 'third place'. We like to beat machines as well as people when we go head to head against an opponent, and more often than not we don't really differentiate between the two.
And we're lucky too. Those of us born in the mid 60s were teenagers when gaming really started to go mainstream. The bedroom coders of the 80s are now running some of the biggest developer houses and software publishing companies in the world. Those of you born in the mid 70s would have been brought up on Sega, Nintendo, and Sony, perhaps getting a Playstation or N64 for your 16th birthday and so on.
But there will come a day in our lives when the coders of the future aren't quite on the same wavelengths as our generation, and they won't have to be because they will be creating games for our children and not us. I can forsee a time when avid gamers in their mid-30s today are going to be looking at release lists later on down the line and thinking: 'Hmm, seen all this before, where's all the Sonics and the Tony Hawks and the Max Paynes?'
There'll be genres out there in the future that we just won't 'get', there'll be ingame references to things that just go straight over our heads, but there will be a whole new generation of gamers out there lapping it up.
The coders of today, whose games we can relate to now, just won't be around 20 or 30 years down the line, they'll have retired, hopefully with a well earned pension. There'll be a new breed, a new collective consciousness about what games are all about and where they're headed, and I'm really afraid of getting left behind.
I can see myself 20 years down the line as I can see my mother now when she's faced with a Notebook and Windows 2000 Pro, she can just about plug it in, but from then on she's asking 'So...what button do I push now? Who IS Bill Gates and why am I supposed to hate him again?'
Although I can't see the technology getting THAT complicated for me, I CAN see the games getting just too much hard work for my ageing brain. A few years ago, an RPG was simply a case of equip items, kill monster, get gold, get better items, kill more monsters...it was fun, but it was simple. Games are now a lot more complicated. Take Maximo for the PS2 which is just around the corner. You've got 'combos', you've got alternative routes through each area, you've got to 'pay' Death to let you have another continue if you die, if you don't have the money he'll finish you off for good.
It's all a far cry from spinning Sonic the Hedgehog through GreenHill Zone and collecting rings. There's more depth to Maximo, there's more gameplay, there's better graphics, but there are also a lot more things to keep track of. This of course is a good trend, but I don't want to see this kind of trend getting out of hand where I'm presented with a game that has so many ways of playing it that I just get lost, wondering what to do next, a bit like my mum and her Notebook.
I think the signs to watch out for in your middle-aged gaming life are things like the word 'retro' starting to appeal more, catching yourself glancing at those dusty old Dreamcast games and wondering how much they'll be worth in 10 years time, struggling to keep up with storylines in Final Fantasy, and looking confounded when being presented with a joypad with more than four buttons on it. I'm still getting my head around 4 shoulder-buttons, 4 analogue buttons, 2 analogue sticks, start, select and the d-pad (at least they still call them d-pads after all this time...) on the PS2 controller. The final straw is when you think that Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarder would sound a bit better with a Radio 2 playlist as its musical backing.
Maybe playing games for the last 20 years is starting to take its toll on me, I dunno. I just hope I still find new games to enjoy another 20 years from now. I might well do because console games have always had a cyclical nature to them. I'm just waiting for the next Micro Machines one, that's all.
And we're lucky too. Those of us born in the mid 60s were teenagers when gaming really started to go mainstream. The bedroom coders of the 80s are now running some of the biggest developer houses and software publishing companies in the world. Those of you born in the mid 70s would have been brought up on Sega, Nintendo, and Sony, perhaps getting a Playstation or N64 for your 16th birthday and so on.
But there will come a day in our lives when the coders of the future aren't quite on the same wavelengths as our generation, and they won't have to be because they will be creating games for our children and not us. I can forsee a time when avid gamers in their mid-30s today are going to be looking at release lists later on down the line and thinking: 'Hmm, seen all this before, where's all the Sonics and the Tony Hawks and the Max Paynes?'
There'll be genres out there in the future that we just won't 'get', there'll be ingame references to things that just go straight over our heads, but there will be a whole new generation of gamers out there lapping it up.
The coders of today, whose games we can relate to now, just won't be around 20 or 30 years down the line, they'll have retired, hopefully with a well earned pension. There'll be a new breed, a new collective consciousness about what games are all about and where they're headed, and I'm really afraid of getting left behind.
I can see myself 20 years down the line as I can see my mother now when she's faced with a Notebook and Windows 2000 Pro, she can just about plug it in, but from then on she's asking 'So...what button do I push now? Who IS Bill Gates and why am I supposed to hate him again?'
Although I can't see the technology getting THAT complicated for me, I CAN see the games getting just too much hard work for my ageing brain. A few years ago, an RPG was simply a case of equip items, kill monster, get gold, get better items, kill more monsters...it was fun, but it was simple. Games are now a lot more complicated. Take Maximo for the PS2 which is just around the corner. You've got 'combos', you've got alternative routes through each area, you've got to 'pay' Death to let you have another continue if you die, if you don't have the money he'll finish you off for good.
It's all a far cry from spinning Sonic the Hedgehog through GreenHill Zone and collecting rings. There's more depth to Maximo, there's more gameplay, there's better graphics, but there are also a lot more things to keep track of. This of course is a good trend, but I don't want to see this kind of trend getting out of hand where I'm presented with a game that has so many ways of playing it that I just get lost, wondering what to do next, a bit like my mum and her Notebook.
I think the signs to watch out for in your middle-aged gaming life are things like the word 'retro' starting to appeal more, catching yourself glancing at those dusty old Dreamcast games and wondering how much they'll be worth in 10 years time, struggling to keep up with storylines in Final Fantasy, and looking confounded when being presented with a joypad with more than four buttons on it. I'm still getting my head around 4 shoulder-buttons, 4 analogue buttons, 2 analogue sticks, start, select and the d-pad (at least they still call them d-pads after all this time...) on the PS2 controller. The final straw is when you think that Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarder would sound a bit better with a Radio 2 playlist as its musical backing.
Maybe playing games for the last 20 years is starting to take its toll on me, I dunno. I just hope I still find new games to enjoy another 20 years from now. I might well do because console games have always had a cyclical nature to them. I'm just waiting for the next Micro Machines one, that's all.
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We're mostly all gamers. That gives us something in common. We're competitive. We like to win. We like to play. We like to immerse ourselves from time to time in a cracking good console or PC game and detach ourselves from our surroundings ala Sony's 'third place'. We like to beat machines as well as people when we go head to head against an opponent, and more often than not we don't really differentiate between the two.
And we're lucky too. Those of us born in the mid 60s were teenagers when gaming really started to go mainstream. The bedroom coders of the 80s are now running some of the biggest developer houses and software publishing companies in the world. Those of you born in the mid 70s would have been brought up on Sega, Nintendo, and Sony, perhaps getting a Playstation or N64 for your 16th birthday and so on.
But there will come a day in our lives when the coders of the future aren't quite on the same wavelengths as our generation, and they won't have to be because they will be creating games for our children and not us. I can forsee a time when avid gamers in their mid-30s today are going to be looking at release lists later on down the line and thinking: 'Hmm, seen all this before, where's all the Sonics and the Tony Hawks and the Max Paynes?'
There'll be genres out there in the future that we just won't 'get', there'll be ingame references to things that just go straight over our heads, but there will be a whole new generation of gamers out there lapping it up.
The coders of today, whose games we can relate to now, just won't be around 20 or 30 years down the line, they'll have retired, hopefully with a well earned pension. There'll be a new breed, a new collective consciousness about what games are all about and where they're headed, and I'm really afraid of getting left behind.
I can see myself 20 years down the line as I can see my mother now when she's faced with a Notebook and Windows 2000 Pro, she can just about plug it in, but from then on she's asking 'So...what button do I push now? Who IS Bill Gates and why am I supposed to hate him again?'
Although I can't see the technology getting THAT complicated for me, I CAN see the games getting just too much hard work for my ageing brain. A few years ago, an RPG was simply a case of equip items, kill monster, get gold, get better items, kill more monsters...it was fun, but it was simple. Games are now a lot more complicated. Take Maximo for the PS2 which is just around the corner. You've got 'combos', you've got alternative routes through each area, you've got to 'pay' Death to let you have another continue if you die, if you don't have the money he'll finish you off for good.
It's all a far cry from spinning Sonic the Hedgehog through GreenHill Zone and collecting rings. There's more depth to Maximo, there's more gameplay, there's better graphics, but there are also a lot more things to keep track of. This of course is a good trend, but I don't want to see this kind of trend getting out of hand where I'm presented with a game that has so many ways of playing it that I just get lost, wondering what to do next, a bit like my mum and her Notebook.
I think the signs to watch out for in your middle-aged gaming life are things like the word 'retro' starting to appeal more, catching yourself glancing at those dusty old Dreamcast games and wondering how much they'll be worth in 10 years time, struggling to keep up with storylines in Final Fantasy, and looking confounded when being presented with a joypad with more than four buttons on it. I'm still getting my head around 4 shoulder-buttons, 4 analogue buttons, 2 analogue sticks, start, select and the d-pad (at least they still call them d-pads after all this time...) on the PS2 controller. The final straw is when you think that Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarder would sound a bit better with a Radio 2 playlist as its musical backing.
Maybe playing games for the last 20 years is starting to take its toll on me, I dunno. I just hope I still find new games to enjoy another 20 years from now. I might well do because console games have always had a cyclical nature to them. I'm just waiting for the next Micro Machines one, that's all.
And we're lucky too. Those of us born in the mid 60s were teenagers when gaming really started to go mainstream. The bedroom coders of the 80s are now running some of the biggest developer houses and software publishing companies in the world. Those of you born in the mid 70s would have been brought up on Sega, Nintendo, and Sony, perhaps getting a Playstation or N64 for your 16th birthday and so on.
But there will come a day in our lives when the coders of the future aren't quite on the same wavelengths as our generation, and they won't have to be because they will be creating games for our children and not us. I can forsee a time when avid gamers in their mid-30s today are going to be looking at release lists later on down the line and thinking: 'Hmm, seen all this before, where's all the Sonics and the Tony Hawks and the Max Paynes?'
There'll be genres out there in the future that we just won't 'get', there'll be ingame references to things that just go straight over our heads, but there will be a whole new generation of gamers out there lapping it up.
The coders of today, whose games we can relate to now, just won't be around 20 or 30 years down the line, they'll have retired, hopefully with a well earned pension. There'll be a new breed, a new collective consciousness about what games are all about and where they're headed, and I'm really afraid of getting left behind.
I can see myself 20 years down the line as I can see my mother now when she's faced with a Notebook and Windows 2000 Pro, she can just about plug it in, but from then on she's asking 'So...what button do I push now? Who IS Bill Gates and why am I supposed to hate him again?'
Although I can't see the technology getting THAT complicated for me, I CAN see the games getting just too much hard work for my ageing brain. A few years ago, an RPG was simply a case of equip items, kill monster, get gold, get better items, kill more monsters...it was fun, but it was simple. Games are now a lot more complicated. Take Maximo for the PS2 which is just around the corner. You've got 'combos', you've got alternative routes through each area, you've got to 'pay' Death to let you have another continue if you die, if you don't have the money he'll finish you off for good.
It's all a far cry from spinning Sonic the Hedgehog through GreenHill Zone and collecting rings. There's more depth to Maximo, there's more gameplay, there's better graphics, but there are also a lot more things to keep track of. This of course is a good trend, but I don't want to see this kind of trend getting out of hand where I'm presented with a game that has so many ways of playing it that I just get lost, wondering what to do next, a bit like my mum and her Notebook.
I think the signs to watch out for in your middle-aged gaming life are things like the word 'retro' starting to appeal more, catching yourself glancing at those dusty old Dreamcast games and wondering how much they'll be worth in 10 years time, struggling to keep up with storylines in Final Fantasy, and looking confounded when being presented with a joypad with more than four buttons on it. I'm still getting my head around 4 shoulder-buttons, 4 analogue buttons, 2 analogue sticks, start, select and the d-pad (at least they still call them d-pads after all this time...) on the PS2 controller. The final straw is when you think that Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarder would sound a bit better with a Radio 2 playlist as its musical backing.
Maybe playing games for the last 20 years is starting to take its toll on me, I dunno. I just hope I still find new games to enjoy another 20 years from now. I might well do because console games have always had a cyclical nature to them. I'm just waiting for the next Micro Machines one, that's all.
Page: