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[Hidden One]

Old ass gaffers ITT.

 

[Iztok Mravlja]

I try to tell the young ones how much they have missed and will never understand

Do they tell you how much you are GOING to miss once you're gone and they're not?

It's the same logic and in my opinion, it doesn't make sense to prefer one over the other.

I'm 33, by the way, and wouldn't trade my experiences for anything, but I still wish I had some way of knowing what games (and the world) will be like in a 100 years.

 

[Lyrian]

I'm 47 so I've been around the gaming scene since before Atari 2600 was a thing.

One big thing I've noticed about this long-view experience is the perspective it lends in modern-day appreciation for what we have and how far we've come.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

Sure, there are still bad games being made, like the recent Homefront. I'm not blind.

But the shit people give genuinely good/great titles is a compete joke if you've been around long enough to have been completely entertained by two white rectangles paddling a white square back and forth across a black screen.

Times change, but the same arguments persist. They have evolved over time to match the changes in the medium.

Regardless, like many in this thread, I also shake my head at how some of the same issues have evolved over time.

For example, achievement hunting has always existed since all the way back to the Atari 2600 days.

/old_man_cane_waving_start

People today fuss about achievement hunting, gamerscore and platinum trophies. Bah! Back in the day, we read a single goal from the back of an instruction manual. We then played that game tirelessly to achieve whatever goal that was. Then, we took a picture of our CRTs with a Polaroid camera, and sent off the developed photograph to Activision in the hopes of **maybe** receiving back a cloth patch 6-8 weeks later. That was a true badge of honor, back in the day. And we LOVED it.

Spoiler

Get off my lawn!

 

[smurfx]

i feel bad that kids these days won't ever experience the arcade era. especially going to arcades and finding sequels to games you liked and finding great new arcade games. i loved being able to see the evolution in graphics throughout the years.

 

[Omadahl]

We are the last generation that will remember having to use land lines, typewriters, encyclopedias, card catalogs, TV Guide, writing letters, pay phones (everywhere), non-intrusive advertising, and a whole host of other pre-internet stuff.

 

[Neff]

I took an interest in video games and computers from the early '80s, but it was around '85 or so that I followed them as a passionate hobby.

The commercial games industry began quite a bit before then (early 70s, before I was born), but it feels like I can say that I've seen almost every significant gaming paradigm shift with my own eyes as it happened for the last three decades. That's a big chunk out of the lifespan of a relatively young artform.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

So, so very true. I think the '90s is hard to top from an innovation standpoint, but when it comes to polish, technical achievement and content, we've never had it so good.

 

[BackFromThePast]

I remember when games didn't take 5+ years to make and weren't riddled with glitches that required day zero patches.

With all due respect, games have also much higher standards now in general than they did back then.

 

[Spiral Insanity]

How can you even think this when we just have Virtual Reality?

 

[bitbydeath]

Great and all but I would have loved for the mobile phone to be part of school life back when I went, that's a social game changer.

 

[Zambayoshi]

I think stuff like the retro arcade space at PAX is super important for showing younger people what went before today's technology.

Everyone has that special moment of experiencing their first real video game. For me it was Pong or Pitfall on Atari 2600 or Mine Storm on the Vectrex, but for my kids it has been stuff like Tokyo Jungle or the Adventures of Tin Tin on PS3 or Hatsune Miku Project Diva f on the Vita.

The magic of experiencing something truly impressive and fun is universal, but helping others understand our experiences and what was magic about them is part of the intergenerational tapestry that we weave. I would argue that it is not so much about younger generations appreciating the experiences that we appreciated, but about them appreciating how and why we felt the way we did at the time.

Hopefully video games will become important fixtures in museums of tomorrow (and today!)

 

[theRizzle]

We are the last generation that will remember having to use land lines, typewriters, encyclopedias, card catalogs, TV Guide, writing letters, pay phones (everywhere), non-intrusive advertising, and a whole host of other pre-internet stuff.

I have tried explaining to my eleven years younger sister that when I was a kid, I remember standing in line at the bank with my mom like every other day to take money out. And if you didn't get to the bank before it closed, you couldn't get any money. You had to wait until tomorrow.

That seems outrageous now, but it really wasn't that long ago.

 

[Lorcain]

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

I played a ton of that game. You're right, it blew my mind at the time. Oh shit I can fly! And then came the Microprose simulators on the pc (C64) that really blew my mind.

I remember the excitement of typing Load "*",8,1 for the first time after buying a new game, and waiting and hoping it would work. Or coding in a basic game from the back of a magazine.

 

[besada]

I tend to think of it as a smaller part of the digital revolution. I'm old enough that I remember the first LED digital watches and LED pocket calculators. I got to see digital sweep away analog in s a bunch of different fields, from music to film. In the process, video games came along.

I started with Pong, and saw some of the earliest cabinets at a world's fair. I got an Atari and a personal computer, and started down the dual path of consoles and PCs for gaming. I've owned at least one console from every generation since, and have been buying all or most of them since the PS1 days.

It's been amazing seeing the change, not just in graphics and complexity, but in the discovery of new game mechanics, and in those mechanics's proliferation across the entire industry. It's been great seeing gaming reach a wider audience, using new platforms, and talking to new gamers.

 

[Fushichou187]

I you've bothered to pay attention to it, It gives one a unique perspective on the evolution of digital communications, interconnectedness, social media, and video games as a whole. I'm grateful for it.

 

[John Rabbit]

Now I think that from that point the upward curve related to gameplay has stopped, and how impressive it can bring each generation is a purely a graphic matter.

yeah i can't follow you there. i am routinely surprised and pleased by new game mechanics and game design year after year.

 

[Fushichou187]

Old ass gaffers ITT.

Fuckin' A

 

[-Amon-]

We have already seen everything?

The media is already declining. We already are in the age of remasters/ reboots. This is not a good sign. Cinema took much more time.

 

[Ogawa-san]

I was alive when Atari crashed, but transitioning from dial-up to broadband (256k ADSL, so fast) and joining the prehistoric internet (Netscape Navigator, so fast) was more historically significant than anything game-wise.

I have high hopes for VR though.

 

[//ARCANUM]

I agree OP. Also with computers. I started with DOS and now we at Windows 10 and Mac OS X.

 

[dreamcastmaster]

Great and all but I would have loved for the mobile phone to be part of school life back when I went, that's a social game changer.

I remember Game & Watch being a new thing and sneaking a quick game in class without the teacher noticing. Portable gaming of any kind was a revelation even if it was limited LCD games. and then all at once around 1989 Nintendo, Sega and Atari came out with portable game consoles with interchangeable games. That was the next evolution.

 

[Noirulus]

I'm 23 and I've experienced it as well. I went from playing Super Mario Bros and Contra on the NES, Wolfenstein 3D on PC to Gameboy color, advance then PS2, etc. I did miss the PS1 Era tho unfortunately.

 

[Verelios]

Where's Boney to represent us old timers sucking and blowing!

 

[Peru]

I do like to play Atari 2600 games now and then for perspective. Some of those games are still fun to play but my mind always ends up imagining what it would be like to bring a game like Uncharted 4 back in time to someone playing Raiders of the Lost Ark from 1982.

Another fun thought experiment is - what if games _only_ evolved visually from then to now? What if the gameplay was still the same, but with today's hyper realistic graphics?

 

[spekkeh]

Games started in the fifties though, with the seventies being the real breakthrough. As much as I'd like to say I was there starting from C64 and the arcades and then going to NES, the real Cambrian explosion of gaming happened in the arcades slightly before my time (Pong, Space Invaders, Asteroids), you'd have to say 40+ GAF at least.

Now the World Wide Web though. Going from BBS to Netscape Navigator 1.0 and mIRC, I was definitely there right when it happened.

 

[Crispy]

Exactly. Exactly. I agree so much with this post. That is why I am more lenient on games than most people. When you grew up on some of the games from NES like Hydlide and some of the later Atari systems, it's hard to criticize something like Street Fighter, Battlefield, FallOut and Assassin's Creed. Oh, the writing, acting and story are horrible!!! Really? Games used to not have acting, voices, music, storytelling and barely any text. Kids have no idea how good they have it today.

I see this completely opposite. To take Fallout as an example, I've played Fallout 1 when it came out and thought it was incredible. I replayed it last year and it still blew me away. When I see Fallout 4, I see lots of wasted potential. If a twenty year old game can be so much better, in spite of technological progress, you don't have your priorities straight as a developer IMO. Sure, it's probably tougher to make all different elements like graphics and whatnot come together, but as a player I shouldn't be bothered with that. I should just play the game and have a great experience.

 

[herod]

Sure, we've seen console games rise to the pinnacle of designed by committee microtransaction gouging derivative dumb nonsense.

 

[Captain Tuttle]

I'm 47 so I've been around the gaming scene since before Atari 2600 was a thing.

One big thing I've noticed about this long-view experience is the perspective it lends in modern-day appreciation for what we have and how far we've come.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

Sure, there are still bad games being made, like the recent Homefront. I'm not blind.

But the shit people give genuinely good/great titles is a compete joke if you've been around long enough to have been completely entertained by two white rectangles paddling a white square back and forth across a black screen.

Such a great post. I'm 48 and lucky enough to have seen the industry grow and mature, I definitely don't take it for granted.

Excited to see what the next 40 years brings

 

[jblank83]

The internet was one of the most historical changes in Human history, yes. People able to communicate with each other instantly, anywhere in the world? That's huge.

So much of human history has revolved around being isolated. Wars, politics, culture are all, at least partially, because of separation, isolation, distance, us and them.

I remember when it was possible to get lost driving somewhere. I remember when learning something required going to "the stacks" in a university, looking through a microfilm catalog, sending away for a book on the other side of the country, and waiting several weeks until it was shipped to you. I remember when we didn't know what was going on in Syria right this minute, much less a week ago.

This has been an incredibly historic time and I'm glad I was able to see it.

 

[Mr. Giggles]

*snip*

And Porn....don't even get me started on how hard it was to come across that as a kid.

There's so much truth here.

Finding porn was one challenge..... hiding it was another.

I still remember watching porn on VHS tapes, back then there was no quick "alt+f4" or "incognito tabs" - getting caught was fucked up because half the time the porn is still playing

 

[adj_noun]

I still remember what I thought about the internet in 95: "hey, that's kinda neat."

Little did I know.

 

[Omadahl]

There's so much truth here.

Finding porn was one challenge..... hiding it was another.

I still remember watching porn on VHS tapes, back then there was no quick "alt+f4" or "incognito tabs" - getting caught was fucked up because half the time the porn is still playing

I found a bag. A literal brown bag of porno tapes in the street at the perfect age of 13. It was like some porn god bestowed his greatest gifts on me. A thousand Christmas mornings in a crumpled dirty bag just lying on the curbside. It held wonders like "In and Out of Africa" and some classic Asia Carrera. God bless the filthy pervert who left that bag out there. He was doing god's work.

 

[Fusebox]

You're over 30 now OP, saying shit like 'thinked' isn't cute anymore it just makes you sound like a moron.

40+ gettin cranky and representing.

 

[Zaki2407]

Old ass gaffers ITT.

35 here. I feel old and I'm proud of it ^_^

 

[petran79]

I'm 47 so I've been around the gaming scene since before Atari 2600 was a thing.

One big thing I've noticed about this long-view experience is the perspective it lends in modern-day appreciation for what we have and how far we've come.

When people online so casually drop sentiments that this game or that game is "complete shit" (Fallout 4, iOS, etc.), I just shake my head and laugh.

When you lived in an age where Superman (2600) was legitimately mind-blowing, it's hard to take a gaming community's ruthless criticism and cynicism seriously.

Sure, there are still bad games being made, like the recent Homefront. I'm not blind.

But the shit people give genuinely good/great titles is a compete joke if you've been around long enough to have been completely entertained by two white rectangles paddling a white square back and forth across a black screen.

It kinda reminds me of Saint-Exupéry when he complained that that those who flew the more advanced aircraft had become more like accountants than pilots

 

[anothertech]

Well, as long as we all join the cyborgs when singularity happens in a few years, we can all see what virtual worlds will be like for the next thousand years.

Was fun to see it in its infancy though