What do I mean by Gaming Father — I Suppose I have two sides to that statement. Firstly, I am part of the generation of gamers that first grew up with both consoles and computers being the norm. I was born in 1989 and so I am a 90s kid.
My first experience of computing was using my grandads Amiga 1200 — he had customised it with a hard drive with Workbench as the ‘desktop’ and a file handler that was called Directory Opus. We had a ton of games on it and it was my first taste of gaming, my favourite game being ‘Worms’ by team 17.
I am certain there were great computing minds way before I was even thought of, I don’t want to discredit those gamers who came before as they helped to move the gaming experience along. The age of gaming really took off in the 80s and 90s with the introduction of Sega and Nintendo. My first console was the Sega Master System with the built in game ‘Alex the Kid’. I also recall playing on the Sega Saturn with games such as Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and Rayman. I remember the day we got a Playstation, the first 2 games we had were Tomb Raider 2 and Final Fantasy 7. Both caught my imagination from the start. My journey into gaming had begun.
The Other side of the statement ‘Gaming Father’ is exactly that. I have 2 little boys under the age of 3 and a wife to spend time with, this obviously limits the time I have to game. I’d like to think that there are plenty of parents in their 20s and 30s who still hold a place for gaming. I can say that it has been difficult over the last 2.5 years to catch time. My younger boy is just over the age of 1 and has begun settling better at night, giving me a bit more of a chance to game and to begin recording footage.
One of my favourite streamers on Twitch is a minecrafter known as Bacon_Donut. He has a ‘family friendly’ stream and some of the advice and conversations that occur in his chat can be philosophical. He is an inspiring streamer and person because he has 2 children who he sometimes mentions.
I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that even though some of us are parents, it doesn’t have to signal the end of our gaming voyage.
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