My whole life, so almost 30 years now.
Got started on Super Mario/Duck Hunt/That track game with the pad and never looked back
I want to say the very first game I’ve ever played was the arcade Space Invaders and it would have been between '74 and '76, so 40 years or close to it. I’d been going to Kennywood park as long as I can remember. They had 3 arcades there, and I’m sure I played Space Invaders when I was 5ish but I don’t remember it much. This would have been the original black and white version, not the “fancy” one which was also black and white but had colored plastic over parts of the screen to make it look like the game was in color. I also remember a Fire Truck game where you had to steer a fire truck down narrow streets. I think a second player could control the back of the truck with the second steering wheel(for an additional quarter). I also dimly remember the arcade version of Circus, where you had to move a seesaw back and forth across your screen to bounce clowns off of it (similar to Breakout). Ah, happy times 
The first home game I definitely remember playing was also Space Invaders. A family friend with an Atari 2600 (complete with fake wood paneling!) had Space Invaders, Circus, Combat, and a few others. This would have been about 1977 or so. A couple years or so later I got an Atari 2600 of my very own, with Combat (came with the system), Space Invaders, Breakout, Kaboom!, Fishing Derby, Pitfall, Adventure, Riders of the Lost Ark and some others. I don’t remember which ones I got first (other than combat), but I am almost positive the second game was Space Invaders (it was HUGE back then). I remember the RF switches that you used to hook the system up would not work on older televisions, and if you left the game on pause too long, or played too long, you’d get an image permanently burned into your screen.
I am not sure what you mean by “how are you now”? I’m still playing video games, if that’s what you’re asking. Not surprisingly, I love retro games and play a lot of them. I keep meaning to look into emulators for classic games, but fear of viruses and want of information has kept me from seeking them out. I haven’t owned a console since the PS1, but I have a PC, an ipod touch, and an old Sega Genesis for my gaming.
Damn this is bringing back memories. Finding the “invisible dot” in Adventure, my entire family playing Kaboom! and Fishing Derby at my moms house during the holidays, me and my uncle trying to figure out other ways to beat Raiders of the Lost Ark (first game I remember with multiple paths/endings), mapping out every one of the 255 screens in Pitfall, having a black and white Atari 5200 for 6 months because I didn’t realize there was a color dial on the system (it has to be the television!), spending half my life from 1980 to 85 in arcades, the Pac Man for the 2600 insanity, the horrible suckitude of E.T. and the Swordquest games, subscribing to “Joystick” magazine and my friends making fun of the name (which apparently also a slang term for dildos), spending $15 in one sitting trying to beat Super Cobra (there was that one part I just couldn’t get past), and many many more.
Every since they first showed up next to the pinball machines in the local arcade and pizza shops. I cannot remember the first video game I played, which pisses me off a little. Probably Space Invaders like many have mentioned here.
Probably 40 years or so, like others
Arcade games like asteroids. Although I had a handheld game that was supposed to be a football game as a kid. It had LED’s to show players positions on the field. Not sure if that counts.
Mostly functional 50 year old. 
I was hoping I’d be the venerable old man of gaming by telling you I played Pong when the home version came out as well as the original Pac-Man arcade game.
41 posts, 34 of which are new threads. Do we have a term for drive-by OPs? Or chronically posting them?
I suggest Richmaning. 
http://stuffwecollect.com/lark-programmable-tv-game-and-the-pong-clone-war-of-the-1970s
It was awful. I’ve still got it though.
I remember playing Infocom text-only games on my dad’s Apple IIe. Then we got an Atari. My first addiction was Super Mario Brothers, followed by Legend of Zelda. I loved the adventure games, like Metroid, Rygar, Final Fantasy, and so on.
Twice in my gaming life I was side-lined with tendonitis. The first time, early on, it was known as “Atari thumb”. The second time it was the tendon that ran from my hand to my elbow, which took six months to heal.
When the games advanced to being mega-complex with so many characters, traits, options, weapons, etc. I switched to Sim City, then the Sims 1,2,3 series.
Today I am a huge Sims 3 addict. I spend most of my game time building entire towns, but I also like to create bizarre Sims and put them in unusual scenarios, like two pregnant male Grim Reapers, or a city filled with clones of one Sim ala Being John Malkovich. I love the fact that if I can imagine it, I can probably recreate it in Sims. I also appreciate the many humorous details in the game, like Sims leaving the crusts when they eat PB&J sandwiches.
35 years.
Technically Pong but that was a console game (that is all the console did). Then were some games on the Atari 2600…specifically that shooting gallery game where planes flew overhead on different levels and you had to shoot them down.
What I would consider my first real “PC game” was Zork. My first “real as we understand them today” PC game (e.g. had graphics) was Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple II followed closely by Aztec.
I suck at most games…especially games where twitch reactions are important. Still love them though and still play regularly.
You can still play Zork and other Infocom games online. I actually disliked video games initially because they couldn’t compete with the worlds I imagined in the text-only games.
I was probably about 5. It was in the late 80’s when my mom bought my dad an NES and I was hooked on Super Mario Brothers, so 87 or 88. Since then, I’ve have all of the mainstream systems up through the last gen. The WiiU and XBone don’t really interest me and I haven’t had a reason to get a PS4 yet. I see a new Uncharted will be out before long though, so I’ll probably need one by that point.
I got into PC games in 1993 when when I played Wolfenstein 3D at my uncle’s house and was hooked. My family got a PC and I was hooked on Wolf 3D, Doom, and all of those style games. I also like the NASCAR simulators and had a wheel and surround sound for those games. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was the last game that I upgraded a computer for. I bought Doom 3, but didn’t really like it and never finished it. Star Trek Online was the last game I bought for PC. I liked it, but didn’t play it very long.
For arcades, the Mortal Kombat series was really the only thing I ever played. My mom would park outside the bowling alley, let me run in to play, then gripe the whole way home about how I smelled like smoke.
About 30 years.
As I lived out in the boondocks, I didn’t get to arcades so my first game was a classy side-scroller called “N-Sub” on the Sega SC-3000 (which I still have). Bought with the basic cartridge on the principle it would aid my education.
Still play games regularly (PC, not on the Sega anymore).
I probably started in the 70’s, but I don’t know exactly which game was first. I had a Pong console, I played with the atari 2600 at friend’s houses, and I had a handheld football game. I also had one of the first Pac Man watches. There was an arcade near my home. I distinctly remember the old football arcade game with four trackballs, but the arcades probably sprang up because of Pac Man. I’ve played some of super old arcade games, but I don’t think they were new when I played them, e.g. Warlords. I had a pcjr in 1984 (it was orphaned in 1985.) I believe the first game I ever played on it was Zork 1.
Today I’m mostly playing online poker, but last year I was playing some of the ipad games like Clash of Clans. I still have an account with Entropia, but I don’t play anymore and I’m cashing out my account. However, I still have a stash of MAME Roms somewhere that is ready to play, along with an analog 6 button joystick and a soundcard with joystick port.
I used to play Hamurabi on a mainframe that my father was in charge of. I see it was written in 1968. I don’t know when I first played it, some time in the early seventies I guess. So about 40 years.
Though I suppose it doesn’t count as a “video” game since it was text based. And when I first played it, it wasn’t even by typing text on a video screen: it was played by entering instructions - by keyboard - which were printed out in hard copy, along with the computer’s response
We had a ZX-81 and I played two games on that, both ascii scrolling games, one where you dropped a depth charge on a submarine, and another where you had to dodge asteroids.
We than had various computers from my fathers work, this is one, and I had to program basic games.
http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102633702
Anyway, 32 years playing games and I am 42.
I am a relatively normal 42 year old, with wife, kids, dog and a skiing addiction.
In the 1970s I played Pong a few times. Maybe a total of 2 or 3 hours. Since then occasionally Pac Man or Ms. Pacman. Since then I’ve played Bejeweled on my iPhone now and then. I’ve never owned or played the games that you can buy and play on a device designed for games. Xstation?
About 30 years. My first computer was an Acorn Electron, which was released in 1983. I would have got one either for Christmas or my birthday the following June.
My first game, ignoring the crap that came on the “Welcome” tape was Acornsoft’s Monsters.
I am weirdly proud that I still have my original copy of “Elite” from 1984 (and the original Acornsoft version, none of this Firebird port stuff!) and as such am massively, massively excited about Elite: Dangerous.
Thirty some-odd years. We had an Atari 2600 pretty early on, and a friend had a Magnavox Odyssey that we played occasionally when we could tape the overlays on the screen.
I moved up to a Commodore Vic-20 at some point in elementary school, and from there to a Commodore 64 in about 8th grade. My brother had a NES and then a Sega Genesis, while I went from the C64 to a PC in early 1989. Since then, it was primarily PC gaming, although I did pick up a second-hand Sony Playstation in about 2001, and a Xbox 360 in about 2009, and a Xbox One last year.
We had a tank battle game in the basement of the student union at my college during the 1975-76 year. Can’t remember what its name was, but it was a two-person game, with each person maneuvering one tank and trying to shoot the other one in an obstacle-strewn landscape.
I’m pretty sure I played Pong before the tank game, but can’t remember for sure.