But nowadays, nobody ever learns what “acceptable” trash talk is, and instead just behave like total devolved cretins.

I was a little bit slow getting into the internet era. I’d been using local bulletin board systems and playing games over modem for about 4 years before I got into it. I loved the text based BBS games, and that’s what ultimately brought me onto the internet. A friend of mine had quit playing the local BBS games, and when I asked why, she told me she’d been playing an internet text game called Threshold. So I got online, and checked it out. It hooked me, and for the first 6 months or so I was on the net, all I was using it for was telnetting to Threshold.

I was also big on arcades. Street Fighter 2 was pretty much my defining game. Double Dragon was probably the first game I really loved. I really miss the days where every mall had at least 5 or 6 arcade games kicking around the hallways, along with a dedicated arcade. Some arcade experience would do modern internet gamers good. There was always trash talk in the arcades, but there are certain lines you didn’t cross unless you were looking to get your ass kicked. Such lines unfortunately don’t exist in online gaming, and thus the players say some pretty stupid and offensive stuff.

As a teenager, I remember being saddened by the increasing complexity and computerization of cars. I wished that I’d been born when it was more normal/possible/practical to do more than basic work (fluids, filters, etc) in your driveway. In a similar way (I believe), the guts of computer hardware/software continue to get abstracted/complicated. There’s a bit of pressure to understand those guts when they’re newer and haven’t gotten pretty/polished/automated yet. It’s certainly still possible to dig in of course, but I can’t help but feel that I’d be overwhelmed trying to start my geek life now.

I suppose the next generation will feel the same way.

I think he makes a very good point that the “computer age” began right when people born about this time were at the perfect age for it – 10-15 or so. You are old enough to understand it, and young enough to view it with an incredible sense of childlike wonder.

Ohhh, you mean for geeks? I don’t think that really started till the 70s, unless you count the moon landing.

Now look what you did. I feel old and ungeeky.

As a German I also needed a few extra years to play Might & Magic and similar more text intensive games, as all games were in English. School actually did something for me!

I remember when I once asked for the “original” English version of a game and got told, the German version is the native version. I think it was the game “Gothic”, IIRC… I am still used to play the English version even if there is a translation available.

I am quite sure that there are new and exciting games out there for the kids from today. Just think about World of Warcraft. It might bore ME to hell… but for those NEW to the genre, it is nothing short of amazing.

I am also not sure if I do not just miss to recognize new trends and developments, e.g. I am not a fan of Manga/Anime comic style and the mobile phone, MP3 and other portable devices madness did not touch me that much. I never got into portable gaming, though it was the rave when I was still young.

So maybe I am just like Aristotle and see only the bad in today’s youth. He made some interesting statements about the atrocities of younger persons that still apply today. Speaking about the youth from the perspective of an old fart, it still bothers me to have passed the 30 already, I am not that old…

But I think Raph Koster has a point, other people would not call it the perfect geek age, but rather a time of media change. From literacy to TV to the internet, new ways of information and gaming abound in our ever faster changing time.

Add in the luxury that wars are fought in foreign countries and not at home, despite constant economical crisis, everyone being part of “western culture” lives indeed in a blessed age IMO.

And all of this makes me think that although it’s been an amazing geek era, it just goes to show that a lot of it is in the mindset. If you aren’t afraid of new things and use them wholeheartedly, it’s always a good era to be a geek.

And I don’t mean that to be entirely facetious, some things worked well for certain ages, but what comes next I can hardly imagine. But that also means it’s kind of our job to make the next few decades work out perfectly for those born tomorrow.