Am I the oldest gamer at Anandtech?

[ronach]

I've been gaming since the mid 70's. FPS is my favorite genre, but I do most everything else on occasion except MMO style. If you see me on the BF3 servers.....stand still so I can get a shot at you, for criminy s sake. I don't care if you are on my team or not...I can't keep running around carrying all that ammo.

See you guys in the game...say hi to ole sgtjeep if you can..if not..well, I'll just have to wing one or two your way then.

sgtjeep

 

[thejunglegod]

i'm 27. Damn, it depresses me knowing that when I hit 60 or 70 more than half of you would be dead (no offense intended)

 

[MrColin]

A poll with maybe 5 yr increments from <20 to >70 would be cool. I was relieved to see the OP was not younger than me.
<---40

 

[Remobz]

I am 39 and I never played a computer game until 1997 when I bought my first computer.

Played often from 1997 to 2008 but slowed down to a near stop now

I keep saying I will get back into it. Who knows?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Anyone up for an over 40 TF2 or BF3 fight night?

 

[DeadFred]

Anyone up for an over 40 TF2 or BF3 fight night?

Put me down for BF3.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Anyone up for an over 40 TF2 or BF3 fight night?

What, can't keep with with a 30yo in TF2?

 

[Kabob]

There was a guy on AVS Forum who's wife bought him an Xbox 360 for his 80(somethingith) birthday and he got hooked. I know it's not PC gaming but if I'm playing Halo in my 80's I'll be a happy man.

 

[brandonb]

I'm 36... When I was 16 or so, I used to hop around on BBS's back in the day (before the internet craze).

I remember one guy shared interest in video games that I was talking to and invited me over to play some computer. My mom was freaked but she took me over to meet this guy. She of course thought he was a child molester or something. It was sort of funny because when he came to answer the door, the guy was probably in his mid-to-late 60's. I remember saying to him almost immediately: "Wow. I was expecting someone much younger..." His response: "So you don't think older people can enjoy video games too? Come check out this game I just got..." I went back to this video game room and there was another guy there, probably in his 30's or 40's, and we just hung out and played video games.

I went over there a few times after that, but then he got all buckie with me over some issue. He was actually a pirate/hacker, and was involved with a hacker group. And he wanted me to pay him money since he was dialing over to europe to get pirated software, and he needed help paying the phone bills. I told him I wasn't going to pay him and never spoke to him again (that was his decision.)

 

[KidNiki1]

i'm 42. been gaming since my parents bought an Atari2600 for me and my brothers. i didn't have a lot of friends in middle and high school who liked to game (most girls at that time didn't care about video games) so I didn't get into all the systems like my brothers did. i would still play on their nintendo (hence my username), but for a long time, i mostly played games at the arcade in the mall. didn't get into pc gaming until the early 90s, when i lived on my own and got my first pc. first pc game I really really got in to was Myst. Been playing games on the pc and my ps3 ever since.

 

[HydroSqueegee]

gaming; the pursuit of happiness at any age

 

[HopJokey]

I think it is pretty cool to see gamers of all ages young and old.

 

[ronach]

Hey thejunglegod,
Don't be concerning yourself with the fact that some folks wont be making it to be called old bones. Your job is to look out for number 1...keep gaming, and look over your shoulder while on-line hoss, cause ole sgtjeep might be out there hunting you down. I am having trouble looking down the iron sights now...but I have grenades..heh.

 

[Schmide]

43.

Play UT2k4 bombingrun Tues and Thurs.

LoL, Tribes Ascend.

Used to play BF and MW competitively but those days are gone.

 

[Remobz]

I've been gaming since the mid 70's. FPS is my favorite genre, but I do most everything else on occasion except MMO style. If you see me on the BF3 servers.....stand still so I can get a shot at you, for criminy s sake. I don't care if you are on my team or not...I can't keep running around carrying all that ammo.

See you guys in the game...say hi to ole sgtjeep if you can..if not..well, I'll just have to wing one or two your way then.

sgtjeep

We should have a thread about "What is the earliest year you started playing a computer game?"

You might have won that award?

 

[Remobz]

Hey thejunglegod,
Don't be concerning yourself with the fact that some folks wont be making it to be called old bones. Your job is to look out for number 1...keep gaming, and look over your shoulder while on-line hoss, cause ole sgtjeep might be out there hunting you down. I am having trouble looking down the iron sights now...but I have grenades..heh.

I never was good at FPS games because I started at the age of 24 and my reflexes were terrible compared to the younger kids. Needless to say, I never had a chance to practice that much to improve

OH well, computer gaming was never my destiny....lol!

 

[Ashenor]

37, about to be 38 and feel like i am 20 still lmao.

Age just really is a number, i never understood that until i got past 30.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

37, about to be 38 and feel like i am 20 still lmao.

Age just really is a number, i never understood that until i got past 30.

You'll rediscover it when you hit 50. I had a laugh at myself the other day. When I was a kid, there was a saying, "Lordy, Lordy, feelin' forty." Then I realized I wished I felt as good as I did when I was forty.

 

[Whirlwind]

Just turned 54....do I win!!!

 

[StinkyPinky]

Why is acceptable to watch TV at any age,but when it comes to gaming; OMG you are wasting your time.
30`s here.

Yeah I've always wondered that. Why is it socially unacceptable to be a middle-aged gamer but no one blinks an eye if you sit in from of a TV for hours a night watching shit that melts your braincells.

 

[cytoSiN]

Yeah I've always wondered that. Why is it socially unacceptable to be a middle-aged gamer but no one blinks an eye if you sit in from of a TV for hours a night watching shit that melts your braincells.

TV is socially acceptable because pretty much everyone (i.e., the majority of people judging whether something is acceptable) does it on the regular. I don't think being a middle-aged gamer is socially unacceptable on its own...but if you're unemployed, single, and out of shape, some may view that as socially unacceptable, but they'd probably base it on the total package, not just the gaming (if you stayed inside painting your miniatures or dusting off your toaster collection, all else being equal, I'm sure some judgmental pricks would still find it socially unacceptable). The more people that do something, the less socially unacceptable it is. If you're otherwise participating in society (steady job/school, etc), I don't think most people would find gaming socially unacceptable in and of itself. In fact, I think it's trending the opposite direction. The first generation of gamers is getting older, which means more middle-aged gamers, which means more acceptance!

 

[coloumb]

Memories of gaming:

- Playing games on a TSR-80 at my parents work
- Turning the tv to channel 3 to play video games
- Dialing a # on the rotary telephone, waiting for the "screech" noise, then plopping down the headset on an acoustic coupler
- Playing the original Mattel handheld football game
- Loading games from cassette tape on my C64

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Hahaha, I had a cartridge that plugged into the Atari 2600 that acted like a tape (audio) drive. I remember a cool medieval kill the dragon game and a super big universe space game. Good times!

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Nice to see mature people also game. 35 here

 

[spittledip]

37, about to be 38 on the 11th. Have been gaming since Colecovision/atari 2600. Pc gaming since about 1987- saved up for my first computer using money earned from my paper route It was a Tandy EX 1000 with no HDD.