My life:
Play video games despite my father's immense disapproval.
Learn to program so I can make my own video games.
Get a job where I'm paid to program.
Never actually finish any of my own games.
I do still play video games and he does still disapprove but I'm older now than he was when I started playing and he started disapproving so that's probably not going to change.
Are you me?
I actually learned so I could make a website about music, and then later wanted to make games. I'm still at step 4. :)
Are you two me, then? Only difference is that my dad actually enabled my gaming addiction and was an enjoyer back then, I vividly recall him playing Red Alert, Age of Empires and Civilization 2.
I'm on step 4 mostly thanks to godot, tho. Might give Ebitengine (Go) a try in some months. That or DragonRuby, as I qualified for a free license and Amir very quickly replied to my email.
1990: “Our comic readers have only heard of one video game ever, but we need to stretch this to look like an entire newspaper page.”
I think it's a nested joke, where that one game totally dominates the kid's free time, with the clueless parents thinking that's the only relevant game in existence.
Also, at the time every game was "the Nintendo" to parents, and still was for a couple decades after. Mario had an enormous impact.
I didn't understand that as a kid and I still don't understand it. Why would you take so little interest in what your kids like? I don't even have kids and I still know who Mr Beast is. I can't imagine having people I love, living in my house, who are into this stuff and not knowing all about it. The only way this kind of parental apathy can possibly make sense to me is if those parents just don't love their kids. It doesn't make sense to me.
Video games are pretty new. Most parents of those kids perfectly related tp their kids watching TV and movies. They could bond over Star Wars and have no concept of 'gaming' and remain completely ignorant beyond them Mario Twins and the Pokemans.
If experiencing the world through fresh eyes isn't one of the main points of having a kid, what are we even doing as a species? How can you not be infected by a little one's curiosity about a changing world and learn along with them? I'm childfree and I still understand that much. How can someone choose to have kids and not want to share their kid's eagerness to learn?
To be honest it is extremely wonderful and infectious.
It is also exhausting.
And relentless.
There is no amount of exhaustion that could persuade me not to learn the name of my loved one's favourite toy for years on end.
You don't have kids. The stuff they get into can be ridiculous very easily. My experience has been paw patrol. There are a bunch of shows that have the same style, and you will see these shows a lot. Over and over and over. So much that any show that has even the slightest style as paw patrol becomes A paw patrol. The kid spiderman cartoon is a paw patrol for example.
You do learn the name of thier favorites. But you also see how much some things are the same. 8 bit Mario and Mega Man are different games, but they do look very similar to anyone working a full time job, coming home and cooking cleaning making sure everything related to your schoolwork is done, etc etc etc. Parents don't just hang around and be best friends with thier kids.
Plus Super Mario was one of the first games that had a named character that was worth playing repeatedly. Pac-Man maybe a bit before that, but as a kid of the 80s, we had a Nintendo, Mario 1,2,3, Tetris (which my dad loved), Excitebike, Rad Racer, Hockey, Double Dribble and Rushin’ Attack.
There’s only the Mario characters in all those games, so I only knowing their names was completely understandable at the time. Pokémon wants a think for another bunch of years at that point (my youngest brother was the right age to get into it, I missed that by a few years).
Oh yeah Zelda too, my parents knew that name as well, but we got it used, much later than the first batch I listed. Eventually we had a Genesis and Sonic games too.
The one that got me was when my mom referred to a game console as a game. I even called her on it and her response was something like "oh, it's all just games to me". I know she understands the difference between a VCR or DVD player and a movie, so I don't know why she wouldn't distinguish between a piece of media and the hardware that plays it when talking about games. I think many boomers are just so actively dismissive of games that they make of point of not learning even the most basic vocabulary.
The right page is looking for a "dragon slayer". Definitely not Mario Bros.
Twitch Streamer / YouTuber
I think I was in the top 10% of streamers when I made about $200/month. I'm not sure people should stream for a living. Although, some people get a huge fanbase for the dumbest shit.
Visibility bias. Someone might be able to make it living, but it won't be you. If you want to make streaming a job, you need something else to set you apart.
Now the mother is addicted to games on her phone.
And dad achieves most of his self esteem by posting poorly-done, sexist or racist memes to a cloistered Facebook group of similarly brave folks.
Dammit. That's on point.
This aged well
You actually could work as a Nintendo expert, even back then. Nintendo had a help line for people who got stuck in games, and you could call it and talk to somebody.
Now, did it pay well? Almost certainly not.
I know it's a joke but video games were my gateway into programming. I was so interested in everything about them and how they work. I get paid pretty well for doing it now and I attribute it all to playing video games as a kid.
Same here. I wouldn't want to be a professional game programmer because it seems like a terrible gig for most people who do it, but I'm very glad games got me into programming.
my parents had this one cut out on the fridge
They were right!
Yup, kid became a top tier speed runner on Twitch.
Absolute legend.
That kids name? Matt Turk
The most interesting bit to me about him is that he gained such a deep knowledge during a time when tools were so limited, and with that knowledge he set records that were really hard to beat. Like in other games no record from that era stands serious chances, but he actually achieved really good times. And all of this on a game that I'd consider of limited entertainment value. He must have put thousands of hours into it
Juxtapose this with parents thinking their kid will be a rich sports star. Not much different. But for some reason is an acceptable dillusion.
Or a 70k job to watch garbage tv.
To be fair, I ended up being paid $300-400/hr consulting on the future of technology with a particular focus on video games not that long after the date of the paper in the comic, so job opportunities dependent on knowing games really well did end up existing, even if not filling up the entire newspaper listings.
Are ya winning, son?
Wow, Larson was a visionary.
Must be the parents of Sethbling.
Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!
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