A Milestone: The Next Generation of Game Geeks Gets Going

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 28, 2016

My wife and I were just kids when we got married. At least, that’d be the assumption today. We were both still in school, and didn’t have much money saved up. We made do, and made it work. Splurging on a video game was  a big deal. I was a PC gamer somewhat out of necessity. But when we could afford a game, I’d play the ever-living crap out of it, simply because it was going to have to be my dominant form of entertainment aside from TV and library books.  We’d swap games with friends (many of whom were also newlyweds and in similar financial situations) to stretch the ol’ gaming dollar. Like I said, we made it work. Some weeks we were digging under the couch cushions for loose change to buy milk, but we managed.

We took a gamble as my graduation approached. My wife became pregnant, and we hoped that I’d have a solid “career” job by the time the baby was born. We were lucky. Within three months of my taking a game development job at SingleTrac after graduation, our daughter Rowan was born.

As I’ve said before, I tend to measure time by what games I was playing when. It’s how my brain sorts out the information and helps piece events together in chronological order. My wife was also working as a teacher at the time, which made things challenging. Very challenging. We kinda slept in shifts, with “baby duty” schedules so that we could get a few hours of sleep without too many interruptions. While my wife slept her shift, I played games with the sound turned down low not far from my daughter’s crib.   I think her little baby ears might have picked up the tiniest sounds of monsters dying in Doom. And the barely-audible thrumming of the soundtrack to the original X-Com. Neither were exceptionally new games at the time. We were exhausted all the time, so I was relaxing with some favorites.

When she was several weeks older, I remember booting up an old favorite – Epic Pinball – and hearing her giggle for the first time as she lay nearby as I played the “Magic” table, with it’s carnival-like music. I kept playing it, mostly just playing the music, and she’d giggle. That was really a cool Saturday afternoon. It never happened again, at least not with that music. I played the music for her when she was much older, and she didn’t get the appeal.

I’ve kept the original install from computer to computer over the years. I never played that table much, so as far as I know, one of those high scores from that screenshot could have been from that day.

So yeah, sure enough, she grew up to be a gamer. She’s got her favorites… games like the Assassin’s Creed series, Undertale, Thief, stuff like that. And playing League of Legends with her fiance.

Which is why I’m waxing a bit nostalgic right now. See, tomorrow, my daughter — who is now just about the age I was when I got married — is getting married. She and her fiance are still students. Not much saved up.  Pretty much the same situation we were in when we got married, only with much more powerful computers. Oh, and some used game consoles they picked up at yard sales. Very important.

The cycle continues. It feels weird, but it’s the way things have always been and should be. So I’m just gonna spend the weekend being a proud papa. The next generation of game geeks are off on adventures of their own now.

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