SEATTLE – Jack Jones, a 27-year-old accountant, was reportedly shaken to his core during his morning commute when a podcast he was listening to described Grand Theft Auto IV as a “classic game.”
“I dissociated so hard I almost crashed my car,” said Jones, taking the opportunity to talk to a reporter directly after a therapy session. “I mean, ‘classic?’ Really? We’re not talking about NES games here. GTA IV was on the Xbox 360! I didn’t think I was that old… but ever since I listened to that podcast, my back has been hurting.”
What happened to Jack Jones was no anomaly, sources confirmed. Many “young” people in Jones’s age group are beginning to experience the same phenomenon, with even younger games.
“I remember the first time a game I had played on release got called a ‘classic,’” recalls Suzie Dupree, a grizzled old gamer of 24 years. Dupree has spent the better part of a decade as an avid gamer and she says that this experience is becoming a regular part of life for aging citizens. “I played God of War III when it came out in 2010. When the first new God of War came out, a few years ago, I began to hear people refer to the old games as ‘classic’ God of War. It came as quite a shock to me, then, but I’ve begun to adapt. We’re all getting older, after all. And there’s nothing wrong with growing older!”
In order to help grapple with this issue, Wallace Quaid, 37-year-old gamer and Jack Jones’s therapist, shared some words of wisdom.
“You can’t let it eat away at you. That’s what it comes down to, really. Our lives start passing faster and faster, and you eventually start going, ‘hey, where’d the time go?’ But things will get better for you if you accept it,” said Quaid. “It is important to start understanding that you will never properly understand what a ‘skibidi toilet’ is, that your taste in music is increasingly set in stone, and that we are no longer the target audience for most games. These people are still young, in the grand scheme of their lives. They are just starting to experience the first pangs of getting older and becoming out of touch.”
The interview with Quaid was scheduled to go longer, but he excused himself. “I have a doctor’s appointment to get to, if you don’t mind ending this interview early. My physician told me the other week that I need to start getting prostate exams annually.”
