It has become apparent to me lately that I am a member of a very small minority here on Gamespot, that of the "older gamer". As of this writing I am 30 years old. My interest in video games has waxed and wained over the years, but never has it been completely snuffed out. I've owned Pong, an Atari 2600, an NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Game Gear, Saturn, Game Boy, GBA, PSOne, PSTwo, PSP, an XBox, a Wii, and an XBox 360. Soon, no doubt I will have a PS3. With all of those systems, one might suspect I've played more games than I actually have. My very conservative home growing up was such that games were a needless frivolity. I had to hand-pick my games very carefully. I've picked some winners and some losers. I look back fondly on Mega Man, Mario, Zelda, ActRaiser, RC ProAm, and Excite Bike, even Legend of the Mystical Ninja was a favorite. Later on it was Street Fighter II, Tekken, Twisted Metal, etc. Those were the good games. The bad ones, quickly forgotten.

I often wonder if I'm wasting my time at this age. Sometimes with a renewed discipline I keep myself away for months at a time, but the lure of flashy graphics, satisfying gameplay, and intriguing (if somewhat corny) stories bring me back. Some people watch TV or read a book. In my line of work, much of my reading consists of technical manuals and text books. TV has thoroughly lost my interest outside of Futurama reruns and Mythbusters. So once again I game.

I'm writing this now, my first blog, due to a run-in I had on the forums with a young, 14 year old with a severe case of Internet confidence; that false sense of confidence we all get at some point to be more rude than we would be as a result of global network anonymity. I was told by this adolescent that I basically needed to sort my life out for playing games at the age of thirty.

The way I see it, the fact that I am still gaming today should bode well for younger gamers everywhere. After all, the market grew with ME. When I was eight years old, video games were still an electronics-store side-show, a novelty. Only the very fringe of nerd-dom, only the outcasts played games. I don't really feel like I fit into this stereotype, and ignoring it as I did, plunged head-first into a world of virtual reality from which I would never return. Aparently I wasn't alone. As the throngs of normal kids secretly bought into this new world of other-worldly entertainment, top-secret communication networks were formed. As we visited each other's homes and saw each other's Nintendo Entertainment Systems in the corner, a new language was formed. Soon we were passing copies of gaming magazines in the halls at school. Teenage boys were having sleepovers so they could binge on chips and soda, mashing buttons until their fingers were sore and blistered. The industry grew, and the world started to take notice.

As we grew older, the games grew more mature. Arguably, the "mature" content in these games appealed more to adolescent boys, those like the one who insulted me today, than they did to the young adults we were becoming. However, it didn't stop there. We started to see the emergence of storylines worthy of novels, or at least airport paperbacks. That trend continues, as the industry works to find out what will keep old timers like myself gaming. The point is, gaming has become a deeper and more accepted media due largely in part to my generation, and I am not going to stop gaming any time soon.

The next time some "whipper-snapper" wants to question my life's priorities, I want them to think about this. I want you to think about it and I want to let you know you are forgiven, and you're welcome.