I’m 44, and I play video games on a daily basis - and have been for years. UvulaDaughter and I are on a second round of Tales of Symphonia right now, for the Cube. I’m looking forward to the release of the new Paper Mario game in a couple months.
I’ve also got an NES hooked up, and an ol’ Play Station. And I still enjoy all of my old classic arcade favorites from the late '70’s through the late '80s thanks to emulation.
Bizarre? Nope. Normal, if ya ask me.
Hi, my name is Julie and I’m addicted to City of Heroes.
It’s my husband’s fault. He got me hooked. The first one’s always free and then you’re hanging out at Best Buy, hoping the game goes on sale. You know the drill.
I’m 33, he’s 43, and it’s a love triangle. Him, me, and CoH.
I’m an EQ junkie, and most of the guild I am in is in their 30’s, 40’s, or 50’s. All of my close friends play computer games of some form, although I must admit that we’re all geeks. The bulk of my close friends are my old D&D crowd from college.
31 years old, and last night I realized I have been playing FFX when ever I can for over 70 hours. I can’t wait to finish it so I can get my life back. 
30 years old female here, and I play anywhere from 15-30 games a year. A lot of people don’t understand that it’s mostly adults playing the games, and I get strange looks, too, for playing PC and XBox games. My parents are 50, and I think they consider me and my husband to be very immature, because our weekends are spent playing D&D and computer games, and they’re very important to the both of us; they aren’t just something we do when we have nothing better to do. They don’t understand that when we plan to play D&D, we won’t just drop it to do other things just because they want to get together.
For a lot of people like my parents, adults should “grow up,” whatever that means. I’ve been meaning to start a thread in IMHO about what it means to be an adult. Maybe I’ll do that now.
My parents thought we were crazy to play video games (brother born 1974, I was born 1979) and futz on the old Apple 2GS for hours at a time.
Then my mom discovered Gameboy, Nintendo, Tetris and Dr. Mario. We’d have to go down and make her go to bed at 3am because she’d get the “one more game” syndrome.
She now plays Freecell like there is no tomorrow and would play Dr Mario if I hadn’t taken the Nintendo.
My aunts and uncles, though, think I’m nuts to want video games for christmas and play games all the time.
Filmgeek: 25, female, PS2, XBox, Mac and PC, N64, PS1x2, NES. Ardred: 30, male, plays more than I do.
Whoops.
Ardred is 29 for 20 more days.
I’m 42 and I’ve been playing games almost all my life.
Pong? My brother bought one when I was eight or so, for $500 IIRC. I started playing games then and haven’t stopped yet. (Boy, are my thumbs tired! 
)
Many people my age are not into games as much as I, but I see the trend changing with more “accessible” games coming along. In this neck of the woods, it’s NASCAR, hunting and fishing sims, and casino games. I know people who would have agreed with the OP’s cow-orker ten years ago and they are now coming around, if only to try to keep up with the children and grandchildren.
34 y.o. checking in… I loved playing pinball when I was a kid back in the 70’s and that flowed nicely into an enthusiasm for video games that’s lasted non-stop since then. So this week I am eagerly awaiting the release of Burnout 3 for the PS2 this week and am patiently awaiting the release of Half Life 2 in the next month or three… The anticipation for HL2 easily outweighs the excitement I’ve had for any other form of media entertainment this year combined.
Most of my friends are avid gamers as well, ranging from ages 32-40. The people who think adults playing video games are immature or weird are those unfortunate folks who weren’t exposed to them as kids… The poor souls!
EZ
I’m a 42-year-old woman, and while I don’t play Doom3 (I leave that to my hubby, who is 44 and his brother, who is 41), I do play Solitaire and Free Cell (hey, you gotta have something to play while the SDMB page you want loads ), and there are several games in Yahoo Games that I like (Collapse and Word Mojo are my favorites). I don’t see what the problem is with adults playing video games, as long as they’re not doing it instead of doing stuff that needs to be done.
:smack:
Crap! Now somebody tells me. :rolleyes: 
35 year old male, and I’ve been playing computer games since my parents got me a Colecovision lo those many Christmases ago.
The missus tried one foray into the video game world with The Sims. Unfortunately, she made her sims exactly like her parents and quickly became frustrated by how they acted. She quit in disgust and I haven’t been able to get her back into it.
What are you going to do for electricity in the millions of years between the end of the earth and the heat death of the universe?
Oh hell, my goal in life is to have kids that can consistantly defeat me in the games I play. After that day, they will become adults in my eyes and I’ll buy them a car
I grew up with games of all kinds, starting with a Coleco Vision, then Atari, then a Commadore 64 working right up to my existing computer. I no longer play console games (I hate the controllers) so I don’t own anything but my computers (3 of them). When I have kids I’ll be able to have awesome LAN parties!
The grandfather of one of my friends retired a couple years back. He now plays video games (Warcraft III Frozen Throne) at a professional level and makes more cash now than he did as a welder. He’s 75. That’s an outlier if I’ve ever seen one.
Wow, you can get paid to play computer games? You’re going to confuse all the sperm donors.
I’m 45 and was raised by Depression Era parents. Although not discussed, video games would have been perceived as a young person’s pastime. It’s hard for me to take someone seriously as an adult if they get all wrapped up in a video game. Not sure how to really verbalize that either. It would be like watching someone play tidily winks and doing high-fives over a victory.
I once played a Monty Python game for about a month. Got bored and felt foolish playing it. Also played Myst and liked it for the mental challenge (I like mental puzzles). Strangely, I don’t see pinball in the same category unless the person is getting all wrapped up in it (then it looks foolish to me).
Certainly this is a generalization thing. My parent’s generation played cards and went bowling. Sometimes they played cards while bowling. I have to believe the rules of behavior were as I described. As long as you don’t spend a lot of time at the game and don’t take it seriously it isn’t automatically a youthful pastime.
That is an excellent question. Since as a lich I will have violated the normal laws of physics merely by continuing to exist, I suppose I will harness dark energy or tap into the spirits of the underworld or some such. I’m sure the answer will come to me once I have made the transformation. And if it doesn’t come immediately, I will have plenty of time to ponder the subject.
So…how you doin’?
Well, considering the target of this survey, the results might be a little skewed.
I don’t see anything wrong with adults playing videogames (I’m 31 and a big Simcity and strategy game fan). My generation was there at the beginning with Pong. I remember my brother and I hanging out at my neighbors house wating for his mom to take us all to school every morning playing the hundreds of Atari games he had. Years later, my other neighbor used to get every obscure system like Amiga computers, NeoGeos and TurboGraphix 16s (him and his brother were huge comic book and anime nerds which made their house definitely one of the more interesting).
In college, there were the big Techmo Bowl tourniments. It was the funniest thing to come back from winter break and hear everyones Bo Jacksons stories.
Games really didn’t even start getting good until my 20s.
By the way, I’m pretty excited that a friend of mine just landed a job with Blizzard.
I just turned 40 ( eep- first time I have admitted it) and LOVE adventure , detective, mystery and horror computer games. I am currently playing Midnite Nowhere and Dark Fall 2. I like to believe they keep my deduction and reasoning skills sharp ! Ahhh, there’s nothing better than a cold Coke, some chips, a new adventure game, and a night alone!