Things that make you feel old.

[Zardnaar]

I'm running an rpg that went out of print in 1998.

 

[Josu]

None of the young people remember 9/11, that time when two skyscrapers collapsed on thousands of people.

Ancient history now.

OMG, I was at College when it happened.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It was 22 years ago. The very young weren't even born so there's nothing to remember. Even if they were born but in mid elementary - I was that when the Chernobyl meltdown happened, and only thing I recall from it is from a photo.
So, essentially, if you are a few years younger than 30, it is unlikely 9/11/2001 meant anything to you.

I will never forget how I was awakened by a phone call from a friend - very early in the morning for me (we're 2 hours behind the Eastern Time zone). She said, "Turn on the TV and tell me what I'm looking at."

I asked her which channel, and she said, "All of them!"

So I turned on CBC, and saw that the first tower had been hit. I told her, "This is either a tragic accident or it's terrorism. If it's terrorism, they will haul Peter Mansbridge (the senior news anchor) out of bed and he'll take over the broadcast (one of the overnight anchors was on at the time; I still recall that it was Ben Chin)."

Sure enough, Mansbridge turned up shortly after, and stayed on the job for essentially the next 2 days straight. I remember seeing the 2nd plane hit the tower, live. All the while I was trying to explain this to my friend, who wasn't as much of a news junkie as I was, and when she understood that it was a terrorist attack that was far enough away that we didn't need to worry about it here, she went back to bed.

I ended up with nightmares, even just from seeing the carnage on TV that day. It took weeks before I could even look at a skyscraper on TV without shivering, and feeling very thankful that at that time, the tallest building in our downtown here was only 7 storeys tall.

There's a weird 6 degrees of separation thing about that day. Another friend of mine had a sister who used to date Kurt Browning (one of our best-known male figure skaters), who was friends with one of the Canadians who died in one of the planes that hit.

As a 24-year-old I view 9/11 as basically the last major historical event I was too young to remember. I don't have a strong emotional connection to it, but I respect its significance on historical events of the last two decades. For the most part I'm still young enough to not feel old, but it's weird how I'm now older than most college athletes, and some celebrities like Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo are younger than me.

Let's see... the last good historical thing I'm too young to remember is Canada finally getting our own official flag, in 1965. I was 2 that year.

The last bad historical thing I'm too young to remember would probably have been Kennedy's assassination. I was just a few months old then.

The first historical thing I do remember is Canada's centennial in 1967. And was my 4-year-old self ever pissed off that the giant cake in City Hall Park wasn't a real cake. It was a flower bed in the shape of a cake, and my grandmother took a picture of me standing in front of it.

1986 was the year I started to remember some things. It was also the year of Halley's Comet, the Chernobyl and Challenger disasters, and the marriage of Prince Andrew & Sarah Ferguson. That was 37 years ago this year.

Halley's Comet... yeah, that was a disappointment. I'd looked forward to that for years, as I figured it would be my only chance. I kept trying to find it, but never could. At least I had a great view many years later, when Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp arrived.

The Challenger disaster was another one of those times when I was woken up early in the morning to look at the TV, to see that something horrible had happened. That time it was my grandmother who yelled at me up the stairs, to come down and look - she knew the space program is important to me, and that I'd be upset if I didn't know about it until later.


I seem to be 'blessed' with family and friends who wanted to share bad news with me. It was my dad who came into the house late at night to tell me to turn on the TV - Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash.

 

[privatehudson]

Welcome back!

Thanks

Oh crap, yes.
Had a bad case of... hair-loss-mood... or whatever yesterday .



For the thread topic: We have a ton of members who were not born when you joined .

(and welcome back)

Now that's just cruel lol

Also on topic, I find certain subreddits are a wealth of "wow I'm old" material. Like for example "I watched an old film". My idea of an old classic film is Casablanca or the Godfather. Theirs is Saving Private Ryan or Titanic...

 

[Josu]

Thanks

Now that's just cruel lol

Also on topic, I find certain subreddits are a wealth of "wow I'm old" material. Like for example "I watched an old film". My idea of an old classic film is Casablanca or the Godfather. Theirs is Saving Private Ryan or Titanic...

LOL
My Nephew says that Gladiator is a classic film

 

[Zardnaar]

I will never forget how I was awakened by a phone call from a friend - very early in the morning for me (we're 2 hours behind the Eastern Time zone). She said, "Turn on the TV and tell me what I'm looking at."

I asked her which channel, and she said, "All of them!"

So I turned on CBC, and saw that the first tower had been hit. I told her, "This is either a tragic accident or it's terrorism. If it's terrorism, they will haul Peter Mansbridge (the senior news anchor) out of bed and he'll take over the broadcast (one of the overnight anchors was on at the time; I still recall that it was Ben Chin)."

Sure enough, Mansbridge turned up shortly after, and stayed on the job for essentially the next 2 days straight. I remember seeing the 2nd plane hit the tower, live. All the while I was trying to explain this to my friend, who wasn't as much of a news junkie as I was, and when she understood that it was a terrorist attack that was far enough away that we didn't need to worry about it here, she went back to bed.

I ended up with nightmares, even just from seeing the carnage on TV that day. It took weeks before I could even look at a skyscraper on TV without shivering, and feeling very thankful that at that time, the tallest building in our downtown here was only 7 storeys tall.

There's a weird 6 degrees of separation thing about that day. Another friend of mine had a sister who used to date Kurt Browning (one of our best-known male figure skaters), who was friends with one of the Canadians who died in one of the planes that hit.



Let's see... the last good historical thing I'm too young to remember is Canada finally getting our own official flag, in 1965. I was 2 that year.

The last bad historical thing I'm too young to remember would probably have been Kennedy's assassination. I was just a few months old then.

The first historical thing I do remember is Canada's centennial in 1967. And was my 4-year-old self ever pissed off that the giant cake in City Hall Park wasn't a real cake. It was a flower bed in the shape of a cake, and my grandmother took a picture of me standing in front of it.



Halley's Comet... yeah, that was a disappointment. I'd looked forward to that for years, as I figured it would be my only chance. I kept trying to find it, but never could. At least I had a great view many years later, when Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp arrived.

The Challenger disaster was another one of those times when I was woken up early in the morning to look at the TV, to see that something horrible had happened. That time it was my grandmother who yelled at me up the stairs, to come down and look - she knew the space program is important to me, and that I'd be upset if I didn't know about it until later.


I seem to be 'blessed' with family and friends who wanted to share bad news with me. It was my dad who came into the house late at night to tell me to turn on the TV - Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash.

I remember going to a family friends house in 86 to look for Haleys Comet. Not sure if I saw it I think I could find that house now but idk. Would have been 7 or 8.

Before that memory is disjointed for international events. Vaguely remember 84 Olympics.

 

[Akka]

Things that make me feel old ?
We're closed to 2050 than to 1990.

And in the same way :

What I think about when hearing "a 20-years old game" :

Spoiler :

What is actually a 20-years old game :

Spoiler :

 

[AmazonQueen]

Thanks

Now that's just cruel lol

Also on topic, I find certain subreddits are a wealth of "wow I'm old" material. Like for example "I watched an old film". My idea of an old classic film is Casablanca or the Godfather. Theirs is Saving Private Ryan or Titanic...

I remember talking to someone on another forum about films and I mentioned Apocalypse Now and they said they don't watch old films
As far as I'm concerned it has to be b&w before I'll consider a film old.

 

[Arakhor]

White Christmas, Mary Poppins and Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood are indisputably old, but they're all in colour.

 

[r16]

the TV report of the fire that consumed the Romanian oil tanker in the Bosphorus after colliding with a Greek ship . Strangely enough the earliest thing ı imagine to be remembering involves oil tankers , too . TV image of a Phantom landing , using the parachute to slow down , the system to be used on oil tankers as well . Which reminds me of little me in tears trying to get my mother to buy me a parachute plane , seems am a die hard Phantom person ... As she was taking me to have my arm fixed , because ı was jumping on the bed before falling down to get it semi broken or something ...

 

[AmazonQueen]

White Christmas, Mary Poppins and Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood are indisputably old, but they're all in colour.

Naw, they're timeless

edit: I might give you 2 of them but Mary Poppins is 1964.

 

[privatehudson]

I have vauge memories of the Challenger disaster, I was seven and in primary school in the UK at the time and they had us make Blue Peter style shuttles out of toilet roll inserts and plastic washing up bottles. Apart from that its more snatches of memories of various events like Hillsborough, Chernobyl, Band Aid etc. First event I probably paid a lot of attention to as it seemed like it turned the world as I knew it upside down was the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the cold war when I was like 10 or 11.

 

[AmazonQueen]

My oldest memory that can be dated is the 1972 Miners Strike and having to do things by candle light due to the powercuts. I thought it was great fun!

 

[Marla_Singer]

What I think about when hearing "a 20-years old game" :

Spoiler :

What is actually a 20-years old game :

Spoiler :

I also had a conversation like that with young folks who were telling "people in the 90's couldn't imagine video games would become what they are now". I objected it, saying that the gaming revolution from 1978 to 1998 (basically from Space Invaders to Zelda Ocarina of Time) was actually far more impressive than the one from 1998 to 2018 (from Zelda Ocarina of Time to Zelda Breath of the Wild). They weren't convinced, more or less perceiving me as some kind of paleontologist talking about dinosaurs and implying that nothing before PS1 could even qualify as a video game.

Similarly, I described a game as being "3D" to my niece and she answered me "no it's not on a headset" (basically associating "3D" with "VR").

 

[Gorbles]

Every technological shift in video games is impressive. Sometimes it's impressive good, sometimes it's impressive bad, but generally speaking the technology curve in general dictates that it's impressive. The way in which video games have evolved since the late 90s is less visibly-drastic, but drastic in a number of ways regardless.

I'm not at the age where technology makes me feel old yet, but I work in (among other things) web technologies, and that's definitely having an aging effect

 

[caketastydelish]

Layne Staley, Scott Weiland and Chris Cornell are all dead. The frontmen for four of the big grunge bands are all gone (Kurt Cobain being the fourth)

What about Pearl Jam? The big four grunge bands were nirvana, sound garden, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Every technological shift in video games is impressive. Sometimes it's impressive good, sometimes it's impressive bad, but generally speaking the technology curve in general dictates that it's impressive. The way in which video games have evolved since the late 90s is less visibly-drastic, but drastic in a number of ways regardless.

I may be wrong as I don't play every new games, but my feeling is that what differenciates gaming from 1998 to nowadays is essentially a matter of memory. Now that was already the case before you may say, but entirely new ways of playing games were invented from 1978 to 1998, and as much as Zelda BOTW gameplay has been fortunately refined compared with Zelda OOT gameplay, it still relies on the same fundamentals. There are notable exceptions such as Minecraft which invented entirely new gaming concepts, but minecraft was first released in 2009, it's not that new.

A striking example to me is Mario Kart 8. It's already 9 years old with no successor in sight. They are only progressively releasing new tracks. 9 years after Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 64 was already in development. Imagine that in 1994, we were still adding new levels to Super Mario Bros instead of developing new games with tons of revolutionary concepts!

As we are on a Civ forum, Civ4 is now 18 years old, which is older than the time between Civ4 release and Civ1 release (14 years).

I'm not at the age where technology makes me feel old yet, but I work in (among other things) web technologies, and that's definitely having an aging effect

Yeah I entirely agree on this one. Web development has become so easy compared to what it was only 10 years ago, that's just insane. It's so easy nowadays to do whatever you want on the web, technologies are vastly improving in that field. And we're only at the dawn of the AI revolution with GPT-4.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Comparing my attention span to concentrate on a single topic to the generations younger than me, even though my own is not renown for it.

I wish this was a joke.

 

[PhroX]

As we are on a Civ forum, Civ4 is now 18 years old, which is older than the time between Civ4 release and Civ1 release (14 years old).

Ooof....

 

[Gorbles]

I may be wrong as I don't play every new games, but my feeling is that what differenciates gaming from 1998 to nowadays is essentially a matter of memory. Now that was already the case before you may say, but entirely new ways of playing games were invented from 1978 to 1998, and as much as Zelda BOTW gameplay has been fortunately refined compared with Zelda OOT gameplay, it still relies on the same fundamentals. There are notable exceptions such as Minecraft which invented entirely new gaming concepts, but minecraft was first released in 2009, it's not that new.

A striking example to me is Mario Kart 8. It's already 9 years old with no successor in sight. They are only progressively releasing new tracks. 9 years after Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 64 was already in development. Imagine that in 1994, we were still adding new levels to Super Mario Bros instead of developing new games with tons of revolutionary concepts!

As we are on a Civ forum, Civ4 is now 18 years old, which is older than the time between Civ4 release and Civ1 release (14 years old).

Yeah, really, this is a whole thread in itself, but basically you have the following factors:

• Hardware generations.
• Increased application of psychology in video games (good and bad, often very bad).
• Multi-platform and cross-platform releases.
• Post-release support (into "live service" models).

Hardware is a big thing, but the big problem in PC gaming at least is the hardware variance. Forcing people to upgrade hardware feels bad (and this ties into console generations and how they're lasting for several years, if not more), but at the same time you can't be held back by literally antiquated hardware. But even if you define a cut-off via minimum specifications, you're still having to support a bazillion (or more) hardware combinations. And this is before we consider operating systems, etc. Consoles, by contrast, have fixed hardware that only changes when a new console is released, allowing developers to optimise in a variety of (clever) ways.

Psychology can be used to deliver improvements to UX, game mechanics, you name it. Something that "feels good" is, at its core, psychological. This is "impressive good", when games designers are able to nail this. The problem is how various companies have realised they can tune this for profit, leading to a lot of the mobile gaming ecosystem, and more than a fair bit of the modern console and PC gaming market. This is "impressive bad", in a number of ways. It still requires competence, investment, etc, but it's not a healthy thing for the industry or us lot playing the games.

Multi-platform and cross-platform releases are the other side of "hardware generations". Something that runs well on a console is in no way guaranteed to run well on (any) PC, and vice versa. There have been some changes in the latest console generations that (I think) brings their hardware more in line with what you'd expect of a modern gaming PC, but the problem here is still supporting legacy hardware / software combinations (which for specific genres of PC gaming is very much required to hit market saturation). This is before we get onto things like UNIX vs. Windows, Vulkan, etc.

Post-release support is a complicated inevitability in modern gaming. People say "games are released early" (and there are, 100%, an increasing number of high profile examples of this), but there is a similar expectation in that games are expected to be supported for longer. People don't always want a sequel. They want their favourite version of their favourite franchise to be supported forever (a recent example of that is the announcement of Age of Empires 1 content being added to AoE II: Definitive, with people sad this means the original Age of Empires is no longer getting updates - nomatter how impractical this may be to do). So the way companies approach launching and supporting a game have changed in light of this.

And this is without touching on "companies are greedy and want to make money", which manifests in a ton of ways (and affects everything I said above, usually for the negative). But yeah, this is why I think things are lasting longer. And there are absolutely new, innovative games being made (a favourite of mine is Hades, it's a very fun and competent "roguelike"), it's just that the existing, at this point mammoth popular franchises tend to dominate the market.

Whew. Okay. I kept it short

Next time I'll talk about how press events have changed in the past 15 years or so. That'll make me feel old (even though I'm only in my 30s).