Gaming through the ages..

Hello all,

This is a question for most of you. I know there is a vast range of ages when it comes to gamers. Some of us started out early in life, others maybe only with the new generation of gaming, and there are probably some who have just started out.

For those of you who have played video games for more than 10 years.. do you find your gaming habits have changed? I can remember the days of having trouble sleeping..waking up extra early because Super Mario RPG was waiting for me downstairs. I'm 28 now, and while I do sleep better.. I can still get up early and have thoughts of Call of Duty or FFXIII on my mind. I always thought to myself when I was younger that this is just a phase and when I reach 25 or so video games would be an afterthought. Boy was I wrong! The culture of video games is still a huge part of my life. They continuously evolve and still capture my attention. While I don't play hours on end like I used to.. I still play almost daily as a general way to unwind from a stressful day at work.

So, I'm curious as to those of you who have noticed your gaming habits have changed, if at all. I imagine if you've given up on them, you wouldn't be on this site anymore, so we'll see what this opens up to.

Games have always been a huge part of my life and I think they always will be.

I've been playing them since before I can remember-- I honestly have no idea what my first game was because I was playing them before I was forming memories. They were there for me growing up, they were there for me in middle school and high school, they were there for me in college (I actually took my Game Boy Advance to campus and played it between classes rather than study), they were there for me after college when I was able to take my love of games and turn it into a successful blogging endeavor and they're there for me now, providing motivation to write (ten turns of a turn-based game for every paragraph I write!) and support when I'm sad or worried or otherwise not doing too well.

I pour several hours a day into gaming on my days off, and usually at least a few on my work days, as well.

In short, games have always been a big part of my life and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm 29 myself, and I haven't stopped gaming one bit. Granted, my adult life sometime leaves less time for them, but I still play very often and manage to pull off long gaming sessions if I really want to (I played FFXIII-2 for 8 hours straight when I picked it up on Tuesday).

A website my friends and I run also causes me to play video games often because I sometimes review or discuss video games, so in a way I have to play them! :)

EDIT: I can't clearly think of a starting point of when I began to play video games because the habit started very early. While I never had an Atari, I did play ancient PC games and my first console was a NES.

I started with the PS1, sometime around 2000ish. Maybe a year or two later. I remember many a night spent playing FF9, and I used to creep downstairs to go on the PC and play Runescape, haha. My adult life hasn't changed my love of gaming, but it doesn't leave as much time for it, although I do on occasion stay up really late if I'm getting into a game.

I can't remember what my first game was, they have always been there. One of the things I do remember was playing the 3DO on a army game and every time I lost the game over there was a skull laughing at me :mad2:. I think games will always be in my life I couldn't imagine not playing them :p.

It depends on the type I am playing. I tend to drag it out, when it comes to games like The Longest Journey and Syberia. Even though I have already gone through the games many times before, I want to enjoy the story and the atmosphere, which is especially intriguing in said games.

As for my first game... Hmm, I don't remember a specific game, but it was without a doubt one for my Commodore 64.

Most likely this one:

http://www.thehouseofgames.net/files.../robocop-2.gif

:D

The only way my gaming habits have changed is that I have to set aside a block of time rather than just having that block. Rather than thinking "I've got ten hours--let's play video games," it's "I want to play this game for ten hours, so let's get A, B, and C done now and I can do D and E tomorrow."

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Originally Posted by ShlupQuack

The only way my gaming habits have changed is that I have to set aside a block of time rather than just having that block. Rather than thinking "I've got ten hours--let's play video games," it's "I want to play this game for ten hours, so let's get A, B, and C done now and I can do D and E tomorrow."

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I'm the same. I work six days a week so I have to be super-organised with my "funtime". Thank the lord for portable gaming so I can get my fix while travelling. FF1 on my iPhone is currently my "train game" of choice.

My first computer was a Spectrum 128K (Yes I'm nearing 30, so what?). From the first time I played "Chuckie Egg" and "Horace Goes Skiing" I knew I'd always be into computer games.

I've been playing since 2000, and I've kept playing the same amount. I will say that the games don't seem as fun as the used to.

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...algiaboner.gif

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Originally Posted by Cloud Strife777

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...algiaboner.gif

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LOAD"*",8,1

Used to be my parents would only let me play on the weekend, so I'd stay up until 6AM playing. Now I am a grown up and I get to decide when I play, so I play during the week after work, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and dedicate my weekend to my friends because we have cars now and can go to each other's houses whenever we want :greenie:

Gaming for me used to be a way to absorb myself and escape from reality for a while, it was how I procrastinated at life. I used them to avoid doing homework, being around my family too much, avoid going outside much so that the bullies in my school didn't see me to pick on me more.

These days Gaming is a social event and a bit of escapism, hard day in the store? Go online shoot some people, over my families and talking to my sisters fella, play some Zombies mode from Black Ops, want to escape boredom during my week off? Play some Dragon Age 2 or Whatever. It's mostly however about the social aspect. Yes, I am competitive as I ever was, yet I find myself not wanting to bother with clan's or guilds and just be myself by myself. I will still play games alone as well as in a team but mostly I like playing games with friends, nothing so far has quite beaten the fun of playing alongside Dan, Paul, Julian, Quin, Milf and a few others in Halo, Dead Rising 2, Burnout Paradise or other titles. Though I think due to the insane amount of skill we as a group could field on it, Modern Warfare 3 would become a hilarious piss take of us just ripping people apart regardless of their tactics. I had far more fun tonight playing Modern Warfare 3 with Agrias than I did earlier in the night when I put a few games in solo. If I am on XBL and people like Psychotic or Dan or Quin are online regardless of the game I am playing or the game they are playing, I will invite them to join or join their party and have a conversation with them because it feels more natural, I'm playing a game so I'm being sociable with friends.

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Originally Posted by Jessweeee♪

dedicate my weekend to my friends because we have cars now and can go to each other's houses whenever we want :greenie:

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You play games at their houses right? I mean what else would you do? WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO?

I was born at the height of the NES and I've probably been playing all my life. It's always been my escape, my hobby, my time killer. Law school made it harder, but I still find time to fit in those extra long sessions, as well as sneak in the quick couple matches of Call of Duty.

My gaming habits have changed because I don't have a parent telling me to shut the system off and go to bed. Most games are not that long or involving that I feel the need to stay up late playing them any more. It those unfortunate games like Fallout that keep me playing a bit too late at night on a weekday. Most of the time I look at the time and go "Its getting pretty late. I will just finish this level and call it a night".

I have been gaming since I can remember. My parents old Atari and Commodore 64...and I don't even really remember the Atari other than it existed XP

I can afford more games, therefore I play more games. However, I have less time to play them, and they don't make as many local multiplayer games as they used to, so I'm more often than not either playing on my own, or playing with others through network connections. I miss the days when it was four people all sitting crowded around a single console!

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

I can afford more games, therefore I play more games. However, I have less time to play them, and they don't make as many local multiplayer games as they used to, so I'm more often than not either playing on my own, or playing with others through network connections. I miss the days when it was four people all sitting crowded around a single console!

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I miss those days as well. I also think that is part of the reason RockBand is so popular. Get together with friends and rock out. It isn't the same when you do it online.

SNES was my first console and I've been playing ever since. Although the last couple of years my taste has hanged quite a lot. I buy less games compared to the PS2 era, and most games I look forward to are the ones providing a deep, enriching single player experience.

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Originally Posted by Jiro

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Originally Posted by Jessweeee♪

dedicate my weekend to my friends because we have cars now and can go to each other's houses whenever we want :greenie:

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You play games at their houses right? I mean what else would you do? WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO?

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We play League of Legends!

Now that I'm in college I try to be responsible and manage my time. I need to start walking at 7:26 AM to get to the bus on time to get me to campus. But, I have a secret. I tell people I go to bed at 9:00 PM every night to give myself a couple of hours in the morning to get ready. That's a lie; it takes me about 10 minutes to get ready, and I could wake up at 7:16 and be perfectly fine. No, I wake up at 5:00 AM to give myself two hours to play video games every morning, with the false justification of not having enough time to do something productive in that 2 hour span.

Speaking of which, it's 8:50, so I'd better hit the hay!

Edit: To answer the thread's topic, yes, my gaming habits have changed. My gaming time per week has gone from roughly 168 hours to 14.

Your secret is safe with us.

I started gaming on my unlce's Atari 2600 and my dad's PC (probably a Commadore 64) playing stuff like Frogger and Empire. About the time I became really aware of gaming, the NES and Master System were around so I finally begged and pleaded until I got an NES one wonderful Christmas. Between that and playing the hell out of my dad's PC games, I was hooked for life. For a brief rundown of my gaming life, check out this thread. I use to be a huge arcade nerd, but when the arcade scene began to die in the late 90s, I haven't had much time to devote to it anymore outside of DDR, so that's definetly the biggest change for me since trying to find a good arcade is difficult nowadays.

I find that I'm often in the odd predicament where I've lost a lot of time to play games, but it hasn't stopped me from picking them up. I still buy games regularly and I've probably bought more games in the last five years than I had in the first 24 years of my life. So time management is a big problem for me, especially since I get very nostalgic and like to replay my old games regularly. I use to play through the whole FF franchise a before a new entry was released just to give myself some better perspective on where the series had been in the past, but that tradition died around the time FFX was released due to it taking too long to play through all the games since they released most of them by then, and due to other great games vying for my time.

I feel the other difference in my gaming life is that I have most likely grown very jaded over the years, I can't even tell you why or when it started. I think it probably happened around the time of the PS2 but other than that I can't say why it started. It's rare nowadays for a game to consume my existence like the old days. I think Arkhum Asylum was the last new game I played where I never put it down from the moment I started playing, but most other games can't hold my interest like that anymore, which is why I rarely finish games anymore which is sad, cause a few years back, I prided myself on finishing most of my games. Lately, this has all improved though, I've been more passionate about gaming lately than I have been the last year or so, probably because some exceptional games finally came out (or will be coming out) for the Wii, PS3, PSP, and DS; that have me back in my groove. Now, it's just about finding time and not being intimidated by the rather large amount of unfinished games I've left lying around. Still, my goal is to finish at least 20 of these games before the year is over, and to try to hold back on picking up anymore games until I start appreciating my collection again.

I too started in the Heyday of NES, and kept on going. The big difference now is money and lifestyle. I can finally afford to buy my own systems and game, which is big because growing up I was that kid that was one generation behind because my parents wanted games on the cheap. It also means I get better games, because my parents would also buy the CRAPPIEST games ever. Now I find i go through spurts. I'll play games hard for 6 months or so, hours at a time. Then all of a sudden, I'll just stop, and I won't feel like picking up a controller again for a few months. Also, I've deployed twice in the last 4 years, and there's virtually NOTHING to do on an airfield in Afghanistan but work and play games. I bought a new game just about every day off I got (1 every 14 days), and would usually beat that and whatever my roommate bought (he did the same thing) before my next day off.

Total summary, I played games fairly frequently through my childhood, in Middle/High School I got into RPG's and was a rampant gamer, for a few years after I graduated I didn't play a whole lot, and now I'm a 4-6 month on-off cycle, when I'm not deployed anyway.

Batman on the ZX81 (thats a ZX Spectrum for you kiddies) was my first gaming experience, and from then on I became obsessed with gaming, nowadays though, 90% of my game time is taken up by MMO's the rest... I generally play little console games unless something special come out (like a new FF for instance) but most of the time I spend playing a variety of MMO's.

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Originally Posted by KaiserDragon

Batman on the ZX81 (thats a ZX Spectrum for you kiddies) was my first gaming experience, and from then on I became obsessed with gaming, nowadays though, 90% of my game time is taken up by MMO's the rest... I generally play little console games unless something special come out (like a new FF for instance) but most of the time I spend playing a variety of MMO's.

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Good times, Kaiser! ZX81 was our first console in the house when I was a kid. Fond memories of playing Chuckie Egg, Dizzy, Horace Goes Skiing and Airwolf.

Although, the frustration of waiting ten minutes for a game to load only to have it crash as soon as it was up... I still wake up in sweats.

We've got it so easy these days.