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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Prince of Happiness" data-source="post: 1578400" data-attributes="member: 19819">Good Thread!Hi, first time posting on the ENWorld boards, though I've lurked about for a month or three. This thread definitely sparked my curiousity and spurred some thoughts about a "generation" gap between gamers in their mid-late 30s/early 40s and the younger gaming crowd.A little about myself first...I'm 25 years old, and have the creeping feeling that I fall into this sort of "generational cusp." What I mean is, that I number among the last group of Americans to spend a significant part of their early formative years without VCRs, cable, PCs, Internet, and 8-bit and upwards gaming consoles. I learned to read when I was three/four years old by looking through my older brother's Monster Manual looking for dinosaurs, finding them, and then learning words like "sea hag," "flesh golem," and "markoth."I'm wondering if this gaming generation gap is a product of formulative introductions to sword and sorcery? One on side you have folks (like me) whowere influenced by books (Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Lord Dunsany, L. Sprague DeCamp, and H.P. Lovecraft, among others), older films (Ray Harryhausen films, especially the Sinbad "trilogy" for me, Excalibur, Dragonslayer, Conan the Barbarian, Clash of the Titans, the 1st Heavy Metal film, 50s sci-fi, and 30s/40s swashbuckling, Italian sword and sandal flicks), and limited T.V. (namely the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, He-Man, and Thundarr the Barbarian). I also cut my teeth on the old red box, the older "blue cover," and 1E modules. On the other half you have a generation raised on anime (funny thing...being half-Japanese, I've been around anime my whole life...I don't see the big deal either for or against...it's just *there* to me), Final Fantasy and other games, the newer breed of fantasy films and T.V. and a generally shorter attention span, with the types of gaming materials to match.This leaves me in a funny space...I can get a bit of a handle on where older gamers come from (influences, preferred styles of gaming), but I'm not big on the family/marriage thing and don't really relate on that end. On the other hand, age-wise I'd be closer to younger gamers but (in general) due to their influences (and shorter attention spans, sense of entitlement, etc), I can't relate to them at all as well.So, to sum, I was wondering if there are other gamers in the same kind of generational limbo? And second, if you think that these generational factors do indeed make a difference/exist at all? Thank you!</blockquote>

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