I have a confession, well I suppose it is more like stating a fact, this year I turned 36. I am now older than both Jesus and Batman and am one year away from being a Monty Python Old Woman. But, believe it or not I don’t feel very old and that is probably because I still have managed to still be younger than the average gamer, which they are still reporting as being one year older than me, currently at 37. Four years ago when I was 32 it was then at 33.
I have a huge background in computers, but I have never really been much of a gamer. When you work on computers all day long it is less of a relief to then play them at night. During my daily life I can get into discussions that cover topics like we should set up an instance of a Xen server is paravirtualisation mode or full virtualisation (bizarrely I am also married). However, it feels almost like there is a societal conspiracy that one day I will eventually come to my senses and join the gaming masses. Even my Dad, who is retired, plays more computer games than me (thanks for keeping the average up Dad).
Though game play and sales of consoles and titles are big business, this year in the UK games sale exceeded movies, the launch of the Wii a number of years back was credited with bringing both girls and old people into the gamer world.
Maybe also, for someone like me, the level of computer gaming is just not realistic enough, yet. There are some systems that have haptic feedback controllers that shake and rattle if you take on some enemy fire. A little bit of shaking is neat, but I grew up with the Star Trek vision of a holodeck. If there were able to create a system where you can feel the bits of brain tissue and shards of skull slap off your helmet as you exercise an extra judicial killing, requested by, but not officially sanctioned by, your own government in the steamy jungles of Vietnam or Laos, then yeah maybe I might be interested in checking out this gaming thing again.
