Wired Feature on Age Difference in Gaming

There are definitely moments when I think to myself, wow, I don’t know what I’m ashamed of more–the fact that I’m getting angered by this trash-talking 11 year-old, or the fact that I’m trash talking on an 11 year-old.

Clive Thompson, writer for Wired, was a little embarrassed questing with one during a game of World of Warcraft.

It’s interesting running into gamers of different ages, and I know I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with gamers both older and younger than me. I remember one game when I was taking the demo of Unreal Tournament 2004 for a test run, and a ten year-old jumped on the voice chat, much to the annoyance of everyone in the game. He tried his best to talk smack, singing Brittany Spears “Oops I Did It Again” when he got repetitive kills, but it was really scary when he threatened to tell his mom on me when I started dropping the f-bomb.

There’s definitely an identity issue centered around video games. It allows you to hide who you are, which is what a lot of geeks really love. On the other hand, geeks may be worlds apart in age, which can get a little weird.