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THE OLD MAN SMELL by Mr Biffo

19/3/2015

23 Comments

 
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Earlier this week, there was an interesting piece on GamesIndustry.biz discussing ageism in the Games Industry. It got me thinking. Indeed, it got me thinking real hard, guy.

Part of the reason I stopped doing Digitiser, back in the year 2003BC, is that it felt like I was starting to outstay my welcome. 


I'd worked for Teletext - in-house for the first four or so years, and then from home as a lazy pig of a freelancer - for over 10 years. That was a long time to stay in any job. Plus, towards the end of Digi, my TV work was starting to pick up - just enough to take the erotic leap into the murk, and think I stood some chance of landing on solid ground. It was a gamble, but I got lucky. I suppose.

Behind that, though, there was a feeling that I was getting too old and whiffy for games journalism. I'd started to see others, who'd been my peers during the 90s, fall away, or move onto other roles - maybe in PR, maybe in development, or outside the industry altogether. I was only 31, but already I was starting to feel like a veteran. 

Video games writing, I convinced myself, was a job for bouncing foetuses, not withered husks. Writing about games was beginning to feel undignified, and I wanted to leave the party and get a "proper" job, before somebody told me that my desperate dad dancing was putting the younger, more beautiful, people off their chicken satay sticks.

THE ONE-PERCENTERS
The GamesIndustry.biz article states that 26% of gamers are over 50, but only 1% of people working in development are in this bracket. That's a pretty shocking figure, whatever age you are. As the piece says, it's ignoring a huge chunk of a workforce that has a ton of worldliness and skill slipped beneath its cummerbund.

From my experience, this ageism - if that's what it is - isn't unique to gaming. It's a problem (which I completely object to, of course) that seems endemic in any creative industry. Whether it's about salaries becoming too high, a perceived lack of energy reserves in anyone over 40, or ideas drying up as brain cells die... the creative fields tend to be staffed by the young-er.

Nevertheless - while I accept this might be entirely due to my own skewed perception - there still seems to be a prevailing sense that video games are for the young. If you're beyond a certain age, and you play games, the media will often portray you as a geek, or a weirdo, or a serial killer.

This is despite a 2014 survey by America's Entertainment Software Association, which revealed nearly 40% of gamers in the US were aged 36 or over.

MY GENERATION
Frankly, my generation - I'd estimate I'm sort of a second generation gamer (slightly too young to be into the Atari VCS in a massive way, but old enough to be there for the UK home computer boom of the early 80s) - haven't put down their controllers. I suspect that most of us have carried on playing games, despite it being the sort of thing you'd never want to mention in polite conversation. 

Don't get me wrong: this isn't some sob story. God forbid. I've got the label on my head - "Privileged white man" - and daren't for a second risk whinging that my life is anything other than perfect and wonderful, and without struggle. They'd be on me in a second. And they'd be right to do so, probably.
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Frankly, while I may abhor racism, sexism and homophobia, I'm not sure how qualified I am to speak on those subjects, beyond saying "They are real bad things". 

I've only ever experienced any of them as a bystander - I don't know how it feels to be abused or excluded for my gender, my sexuality, or the colour of my skin. 

But I am getting older, and I'm too aware that I'm getting older - I'm starting to know what it's like to have doors shut in my face, and hear the laughter and clinking of glasses coming from behind them.

Places like Computer Exchange, or Game - where once I was so at home - now feel less like somewhere I'm welcome to visit, unless I'm there to buy games for someone's nephew. These days I'd steer away from dinner party conversation about say, the new Call of Duty, and stick to approved middle aged topics such as carpets, or curtains, or pensions. Even working in my day job - writing stuff for kids TV and that - I'm always surprised how few people seem to play video games.

Or dare admit to it, anyway.

THE LONELINESS OF THE MIDDLE AGED GAMER
And that's part of why I'm back doing Digitiser, I think. I love playing video games, but it's a dirty secret now. As a middle-aged gamer, I find myself having to hide my habit more and more. I need an outlet for it, even if it's completely undignified to be writing about games at 43. I don't care. I can't afford to care. Games mean too much to me, and I love them slightly too much, to keep my hobby tucked away under a mattress forever. I won't make the mistake a second time.

So, while all are welcome at the Digitiser2000 sexy-name drinks party, I'd like to raise a toast to the middle-aged gamer - those of us who were there at the beginning, who bought the games, who dug the foundations that the modern games industry was built on. Those of us who have clung to this hobby in the face of adulthood wearing us down, and the all-consuming courting of youth. Those of us who have weathered the middle-age spread, and held onto our consoles like life preservers.

They may not want us in view, they might think we smell weird, and that we can't hold a joypad properly because of our arthritic fingers, but they wouldn't be here if it wasn't for us. They wouldn't even have a games industry. 

So remember that, the next time some 18 year-old second hand games shop goth gives you a dirty glance. Lock eyes with the ignorant little oaf, and tell him that you're proud to be old and gaming. And then chin him in his barely-haired face.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
  • I WAS A BAFTA GAMES JUDGE by Mr Biffo
  • DESTINY: GRIND OR GREAT? by Super Bad Advice
  • BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE by Mr Biffo
23 Comments
Hans Ondik
19/3/2015 06:29:08 am

I completely agree. Even though I am 10 years younger than yourself I don't see myself stopping playing videogames any time soon, if ever.

Unless an apocalypse happens, or I die, or a totalitarian government comes into power removing 'fun' from society.

Reply
Da5e
19/3/2015 06:55:19 am

I used to be an '18 year-old second hand games shop goth' back in the day. They really are bad idiots, aren't they?

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Mr Biffo
19/3/2015 09:16:22 am

You're not one now, and that's all that matters...

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Da5e
19/3/2015 11:41:54 am

Er, well, I'm certainly not 18 any more...

Stoo
19/3/2015 07:04:46 am

I was a bit late for the spectrum-and-C64 days, but I was playing Doom before today's teenagers were born. Hope to go on gaming for many years to come! And hoping I don't end up having to make conversation about carpets and pensions.

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Picston Shottle
19/3/2015 07:18:44 am

Being an old gamer is a bit of a double edged sword. On the razor sharp edge I have a load more disposable income to spend oin games (and a HUGE telly to play them on). On the slightly blunted edge I have less time to play them and a missus who despises me playing them.

However, I do think they kinda got it right in House of Cards; Frank Underwood playing games to relieve stress and give him time to think is, partly, why I am still playing games.

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Mr Smith
19/3/2015 08:26:15 am

I'm just thankful I'm old enough to have been able to live through a period of gaming before the internet, and experienced the power of self-funded purchases without social media or digital distribution.

It's like the film Commando. Today kids are all like: "Why is he desperate to get to a payphone? Why can't Sully just use his mobile?"

It's something you only understand if you lived through it. The newer generations will have never tasted the neon-honey of cathode ray projected light-beams.

I'll be refuelling the Delorean if you need me.

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LeighDappa
19/3/2015 09:25:02 am

The kids these days don't know they're born.

I'm GLAD I was born in 1981 so I could fully appreciate 8-bit graphics.

I remember showing my 18 year old friend 'Super Mario Bros 1' back in 2010 or 2011. He dissed the graphics by calling them "terrible" and claimed it can't be any good if it looks that bad.

Police still haven't found his body...

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Beavis
20/3/2015 06:28:05 am

1980 superstar here. I agree about the 8-bit graphics, I still consider Final Fights graphics as cutting edge as they genuinely blew my mind when I was younger.
CPC 464 in the house and final fight in the arcades? those graphics were the dream.
The world needs arcades again to push the boundaries of the home consoles. something to make us go wow!
or something...
what am I slevering on about
where am I?
is this the Daily Mail comments section?

Sporkwizarad
22/3/2015 09:12:21 am

Jenkins would not be able to compute that sentence

dan de la peche
19/3/2015 08:40:45 am

I'm 32, grew up playing an Amstrad CPC 464. I don't really enjoy games the way I used to, I don't think. I reckon that's down to repetition of experiences though. I still get the occasional game that sticks it's hooks in for a period of time (COD 4, Hearthstone, Binding Of Isaac, the list varies). I'm quite looking forward to the whole VR thing but then I was when I was a kid and it didn't really pan out then either so on the other hand maybe fuck VR for being a massive cocktease.

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Antony Adler
19/3/2015 08:40:57 am

Scariest thing for me, also aged 43, and in total agreement with the article is that my fingers and thumbs get achey quite quickly. What if i get rheumatism type things in a few years? Argh !

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Mr Biffo
19/3/2015 01:44:23 pm

What if... what if you ALREADY HAVE THEM, ANTONY??

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Andy Merritt
19/3/2015 10:48:30 am

I'm 53, and my first memory of gaming at home was a pong doodad that plugged in to the telly. Tvs in those days had valve circuits that took six weeks to warm up, you had to think that far in advance. Pong cost about a hundred quid, this was enough to buy a jet plane or feed a bear for a fortnight.

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Andy Merritt
19/3/2015 11:10:51 am

I just realised that I'm actually only 50. My afternoon nap made me confused.

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Dr Kank
19/3/2015 10:57:19 am

I remember when the 18 year-old second hand games shop goths wore puffy jackets and no make up

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HAPPYFLAPS
20/3/2015 03:38:47 am

Nearly 43 and have been gaming since I was 6 with a Grandstand pong machine. I have no shame when shopping for games or talking about them. Although with the way things are changing in the industry I feel as if I'm being pushed out but I am refusing to allow it and I clinging onto my favourite pastime as if my very life depends on it.

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lilock3
20/3/2015 08:08:56 am

My dad berated me for buying an N64 back in 1997 - at 15 I was already "too old" in his eyes. 18 years on and he still can't bring himself to accept my hobby. I may as well be playing with Duplo as far as he's concerned.

Oh Biffo! Why couldn't you have given Super Mario 64 a bad review? Maybe I wouldn't have bought that N64, then my daddy would have loved me!

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JohnnyOrgan
21/3/2015 04:20:47 am

*salutes and plays bugle*

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Dan link
21/3/2015 03:08:31 pm

I actually think it's more acceptable to be middle aged and a 'gamer' these days, but there is a gap opening between the newer, Call of Duty generation and... well, everyone else.

Gaming is no longer the niche hobby it used to be. I don't think it's a case of being a hipster, but once something goes mega-commercial, it becomes something else. Hollywood-ised and polished. There's a certain expectation of that now, dare I say a snobbishness of 'this is awesome, everything that came before it is pants'.

To be honest, I don't go flouting that I play video games... it's still a bit of a weird thing for 'my generation', that in-between time when Nintendo and Sega were played to bits - but everyone moved on so quickly. Damn life!

It's like football stickers. I collected them for a year and moved onto something else. But I still play my old Amstrad games now I have access to all of them on fancy compootahs! It makes me feel old, but I don't care. ;)

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Pauly_C link
23/3/2015 07:12:13 am

This enrages me often. At 36 Im often asked "are you not too old for computer games?"

No, no I'm bloody well not. to me this stems from being a "new" gamer in the 80's, when the spectrum was king my parents were already old (the age i am now) so couldnt cope with a new concept, much like my grandparents and colour TV, indoor plumbing and not having TB. what really annoys me is that because games were for kids back then that generation (shakes fist at the baby boomers) think games are only for kids. stupid old(er than me) people

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jawa
24/3/2015 03:08:26 am

Hang on... everyone here seems to be 43. I am, too. Digitiser 2000 is a massively exclusive clique *only*' for 43 year olds. If you'e not 43, just pretend by mentioning cassettes and how you still cus youngsters bad.

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Shoggz
28/3/2015 04:46:01 am

I did have something interesting to add to this subject but I forgot what it was in the time it took me to type with my arthritic fingers. Unwrapping Werthers Originals does that to you...:(

Reply



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