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I just got to wondering: do we think non-retro gamers get the same "when are you going to grow up" speeches as retro gamers occasionally do?

I'm assuming they must, but that the term "grow up" means something different to the people applying it to them. Retro gaming has a strong connotation of "childhood" to it that more modern stuff does not. As a result, I imagine the negative assumption is that modern gamers are fully mature men and women who are deliberately shirking responsibilities through the vehicle of gaming, whereas retro players might be assumed to never have progressed beyond their childhoods in terms of taste, sophistication, or awareness.

In short, maybe the criticism of modern gamers is "When are you going to stop pretending you're not an adult?", but the criticism of retro gamers is "When are you going to stop thinking you're still a child?"

I'm only thinking about this because I realized a few days ago I hadn't thought of myself as a "retro gamer" until I came to this forum. Up until now I'd thought of myself as simply "a gamer," and had considered the newer stuff to be the niche genre.

Key-Glyph wrote:I just got to wondering: do we think non-retro gamers get the same "when are you going to grow up" speeches as retro gamers occasionally do?

As far as console gaming goes, gaming has matured quite a bit over the years. Retro gaming on actual old computer hardware is a lot less common than retro gaming on actual old console hardware. In other words, most people will play old computer games on their current computers, while it is a lot more common to play Atari, NES, Genesis, SNES etc games on their respective consoles. So Retro gaming gets mostly associated with simple aracade games, colorful "childish" platformers and action games with nonexistant plotlines rather than with more complex and intelligent oldschool games.

I know that many computer games did get ported to retro consoles and there were some "intelligent" console games at the time too, but games like that are most often significantly less popular (back then and now*) than Streets of Rage/Contra/Sonic-style games
*although some oldschool console RPGs became more well known and respected in the 21st century thanks to the internet

So what I'm saying is that is more "acceptable" to waste time on "intelligent video games" (deep/philosophical/well written storylines and characters and/or complex game mechanics that are hard to master) than it is to waste time on "stupid video games" (bad guys stole your girlfriend, go beat the shit out of them/gotta go fast/shoot a lot of stuff to get a lot of points). Some 30+ year old busy nongamer is very unlikely to try out something like System Shock 2 or Planescape:Torment no matter how brilliant storylines those games have due to a relatively high learning curve/small amount of handholding. He/she might be able to play a game like Sonic 2 or Final Fight though because they are alot easier to just pick up and play than the afromentioned games. So a modern, easy to play game like Bioshock or Heavy Rain will look a lot less like a waste of time to them because they have compelling storylines with depth while simultaneously being simple enough for them to enjoy.