I spend a lot of time listening to other gaming podcasts and a bit less time watching video podcasts about games. A lot of the folks that I watch and listen to have a lot in common with me older gamers (Gamers with Jobs), female gamers (Ladies of Leet), gamers who are parents, teachers who game (EdGamer)…you get my drift. But one person that I have followed for a long while is Adam Sessler and after he was fired from G4 this year I was really glad to start watching him regularly on Sessler’s Something. Well this week Adam hit a sensitive spot for me. He talked about being an aging gamer and what happens when he can’t finish games anymore. It seems that with a 4 day turn around for writing a review he just hit that wall with a game. (The video is about 7 minutes long so you can watch it now or after you finish reading, but either way I highly recommend it.)
So what’s the sensitive area? We’ll I’ve always wondered the same thing. Not as it pertains to NYMG because lord knows it can take me a while to finish a game (more because I am a poly-gamer than anything else), but as it pertains to me as a teacher and a scholar. I have admitted numerous times that I don’t play much multiplayer anymore because my reflexes have slowed down, but what happens when they slow to the point that I can’t play twitch reflex games even as single player? Even now I find myself playing more RPGs and Adventure games than FPSes, but what happens when I can’t play them at all. What does that do to me as a scholar who writes about and teaches with/through/about games. We all know that this isn’t all that I do, but what happens when it is no longer any of what I can do. I have been quite adamant about needing to play games to write and talk about them, but what happens then that is no longer an option for me? Do I get put out to pasture with 8-bit game characters that didn’t hold up as well as Mario and his ilk? Do I go back to more traditional computers and writing and minority rhetorics scholarship?
Do New Media scholars have a short shelf life? Is this something that we need to consider as budding scholars come through our programs and focus solely on game studies and the like? I have no doubt in my mind that games as a focus is a viable thing and that it will be around for a long time (because it already has been). We’ve moved from MOOs to MMORPGs and I’m sure we’ll also move to the next big thing. But the pressing question for aging gamers like me is how long can we move along with it?
