“I think we’re an interesting generation…we are the generation that’s going to be more intense than our parents and we are the generation that’s going to be more intense than our kids.”

-         Henry Rollins

Back in the 80’s heyday of arcade games, it seemed like all the cool kids were gamers.  And not just kids, either.  The fact that arcades were at the local skating rink or other neighborhood hangouts meant guys and girls – but mostly guys – of any age had access to the state of the art in gaming.  And the simplicity of those games meant anyone with enough time on their hands, and quarters in their pockets, could beat a game.  Having a high score in Millipede was something to be proud of.  Being an adult gamer was the norm.

As one such adult, I used to play Doom in the dark with massive club-quality speakers blasting demonic snorts and shotgun noises down the hallway.  We took great glee in pulling spines from victims in Mortal Kombat, without feeling the need to act it out in real life.

The engineering floor in my university dormitory was wired into an intranet.  But these future Engineers weren’t using it to study.  No, the entire floor was playing multi-player Quake games, something unheard of before then.  The closest I ever got was hooking my Doom-equipped laptop through a serial cable to my friend’s computer and hoping it didn’t crash.

It seems that over the years, all those kids playing on their Colecovision got older, as nature intends.  And somehow the games have followed them.  It’s no longer about saving princesses from castles, nowadays.  It’s about playing games with highly interactive environments and maps based on real places.  It’s about getting health from hookers or saving the free world from North Korean madmen.

 A study by the Entertainment Software Association found that the average game player age is 33.  They also say that 53% of those gamers plan to keep playing at least ten more years from now.

As we Baby Boomers – or Ka-boomers? – of  the video game industry hit retirement age, what are we going to be like?  I am still thirty years off, but I am looking forward to retirement for one thing only…free time.  I can play my copy of Ultimate Alliance XII:  Can No One Kill Wolverine? from morning till night without feeling guilty.  As long as I have my home healthcare nurse feeding me on my Craftmatic Adjustable Bed whenever I get hungry and changing my catheter tube every so often, I'm golden.

They’re my twilight years.  The only other appointments I have to keep will be HALO 20 tournaments with my kids and grandkids.  And if they should betray me and kick me into a retirement community, well that place better have a state-of-the-art wireless network.  Otherwise, ol’ Grandpa Coleman’s gonna have to prove how violent games do indeed influence people to commit heinous acts in real life.  Should Senator Ted Stevens keep his hands off my internet, I should be able to team up with whatever still-living friends I have across the globe for 24-hour deathmatches. 

This woman will rule you at Halo 20

I mean, what do the elderly have to keep them going now, anyway?  There’s cable news or gardening, maybe a little social dance with the other residents of your retirement home.  At the rate that demographics are changing – the same study as above found that 42% of online gamers are women – there’s no reason those mixers couldn’t just be old men and women huddled around 6-foot Plasma screen terminals with adjustable massage chairs and IV hookups, playing 30-person matchmaking battles and drinking champagne.  Unless my liver has shriveled up like a raisin, in which case, pass the Metamucil!

Ah, but there’s the rub. We’ll be old.  Our bodies will be failing us.  For the first time ever, the issue of arthritis will be a major factor in video game marketing.  Dare I say it, but the Nintendo Power Glove may return to prominence as the go-to controller for geriatrics with stiff fingers.  This being the future, though, I should hope they would come up with something a bit more responsive to brainwaves or put some buttons onto the armrests of a really comfortable wheelchair, which can also act as dual joysticks. 

I’m sure my grandkids won’t understand why I keep playing Metal Gear Solid Four (which is already getting a jump on the aging gamers with a dying elderly main character), set in the Middle East, a place that will probably just be a big glowing crater by then.  I mean, really, why not?  Without the need for oil, most governments will ditch them faster than a chaperone at prom and watch them implode.  And then what will be left for wartime gaming?  Retro Cold War and Persian Gulf games?  We’ve already drained the life out of African warlord antagonists with various Black Hawk Down style games.  I suspect most games will be more and more interplanetary in their battles a la HALO.

For those gamers who can no longer leave their apartments, the successors to World of Warcraft and EverQuest will be more popular than even they can fathom at this time.  Unable to function anymore in the real world, if they ever really did, they can live the life of a healthy, virile warrior and level-crunch like there’s no tomorrow.  Cause, well, there might not be a tomorrow.

Or perhaps something more along the lines of Star Wars:  Galaxies, where they can take up a profession and role-play it as if it truly were their life.  Why spend all day at the bar drowning your sorrows when you can be a virtual barkeep in a fantasy world, earning a living and busting vagrant’s heads.  The irony here being that you will be spending your retired years pretending to be back in the working world again.  Old habits, you know.

Just think of the sociological benefits of using video games as pacifiers for incapacitated adults.  As our legs and organs and minds give out, we can be hooked up to a life support machine and a game system.  As long as the nurses make sure to swap out difficult games for simpler ones, like Space Invaders.  They do say that old people regress to childhood states.  Since I played that as a kid, I guess it would make sense.

So, if you’re still getting your gamer fix when you’re in your drooling years, look up the Freaketeer on your XBOX Live.  Maybe we can coop a game of Border Crossings, about sneaking cheap medication across the Canadian border, and bitch about what things were like back in our day.  It could happen.  You’ll see, ya wee bairns! 

Copyright © 2006 Michael T. Coleman. All rights reserved.

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