Uncharted 4, Drake gaming on the couch with a friend as an adult gamer.

Jeez, aren’t there enough gaming sites already?

IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, N4G…it’s safe to say there are a fair few video game websites at the top end of the spectrum, flanked by thousands of gaming blogs on WordPress, Blogspot and so on. Does the world really need another video game website?

In a word: yes.

99% of my time online is spent reading video game websites and, as I’ve got older, I’ve noticed that I am no longer their intended audience.

These are writers who are paid to play video games all day, writing articles for 14-20 year-olds who have a ton of spare time to spend playing video games every day.

I was 20 once. I was also 14 once, I think. I remember getting home from school and college and deciding whether I’d just spend the whole night playing video games (it was usually a yes).  I have no regrets about those hours frittered away with a controller in my hand and, honestly, I miss them a little sometimes.

Here’s the thing.

I’m over 30 now. I work long hours and come home to a wife and daughter who actually want to spend time with me. Game time is limited and funds are low.  I’ve grown up.  Sort of.

I haven’t been able to say “I’m going to play video games all night!” for over five years. That wouldn’t fly in my house.  And, that’s okay.

I read reviews for games like Skyrim, boasting a potential playtime of 100 hours, which is being praised by the reviewer as being value for money and all I can think is “jeez, that is going to use up my game time for the next 25+ weeks…that’s HALF A YEAR!”

I love gaming, but yo…I don’t want to play one video game every day for half a year, or more. I want to experience as many video games as I possibly can, even if that means just concentrating on the main story of multiple titles. Games that are too long intimidate me into never playing them.

And, no, I’ve never played Skyrim. It’s true. It’s in my Pile of Shame and taunts me occasionally.

So, here I am, reading obscene amounts of news and content aimed at people who just might feasibly have the time to actually play the games they’re reading about, and I got to thinking…shouldn’t there be a website aimed at us older folk? With real-world, grown-up responsibilities? A website that respects the limited time and budget of their readers?

So, I created GrownGaming.

GrownGaming isn’t an ego-stroker. I don’t care about online fame or anything like that – having a bunch of followers on Twitter doesn’t make me sleep any easier. I have created GrownGaming as a vehicle to grow a community who might only be able to jump into a few rounds of COD before leaving for the school run.  Likeminded people who might want to let off some steam after a hard week in the office.  Grown-ups who envy the freedom that we had in our youth while not shying away from our responsibilities as adults.

Growing up is a fact of life, giving up gaming is not.  GrownGaming is for those of you who refuse to accept that Adulthood = Game Over.

Welcome to the family.

7 Comments

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  1. This is exactly how I have always felt. Being a father and husband, I don’t have nearly enough time to play the games that I want. That is part of the reason that I love retro games, I can get through them much faster then the newer ones.

    Thank you for getting this going, very happy that I came across it.

  2. I’ve been gaming since the days of intellivision! So glad to have found your site. I’m 58 now, semi-retired and STILL picking up a controller every day or two! I’m a PC gamer primarily, but mild arthritis makes the XBox controller my interface of choice. Looking forward to keeping up with your site!

    • Thank you, Dave!

      I’m a PC gamer too – and the Xbox controller is my interface of choice too, just from a comfort point of view. I’m really a console boy who just wanted more from his video games.

      Glad to have you as part of the family.

  3. I just discovered your site recently and more or less be accident via a Twitter repost. I started gaming as a young teenager in 1984 on a Commodore 64 and since then, gaming – more or less – is my life … well at least a big part of it. However also I got older, got a job, got married and the time for games and gaming became less. Much to my regret, so while I end up still buying tons of games my “pile of joy” constantly rises, especially since 2005 when I got immersed in MMORPGs. After playing Guild Wars and World of Warcraft for almost two years I never managed to catch up with my single player games, afterwards.

    Also, I hate not being able to get my hands on a game I want just because it is an exclusive, that means I have a ton of consoles next to my PC. Honestly, when from today on I would stop buying games, I still have enough to play till my retirement and beyond without problems.

    I know its kinda bad buying them all but not playing them in earnest, at least I manage to take a look for an hour or two at most games. I don’t need to play them all but there are quite a few, among them really old ones, I definitely want to play one day – I hope.
    But also one of my “problems” is, I love games like the above mentioned Skyrim, I’m a huge (J)RPG fan. So instead of playing four or five shorter games I bask in huge 100+ hour long adventures. However I often tend to play 10 to 20 games on different platforms at the same time. That means that I take ages to finish many games. For example it took me over four years before a was able to finish Oblivion. Did I mention that I still haven’t finish Skyrim? ^^

    Sometimes however a game can really grab me and doesn’t want me to take a break, Dragon Age: Origins or Persona 5 are such examples. Both took over 120 hours each but I played straight through, not wasting a look at any other game during that time.

    • Awesome comment!!

      I can totally relate to you. I have so many games on Steam that it hurts me when I realise that I likely will never play them all. I, too, have fallen in love with MMORPGs and that has severely impacted my ability to finish other games, but my game time is so limited that I don’t struggle to restrict myself to one or two games at a time.

      All that matters is that we’re enjoying the games that we do play. When you buy a game and don’t play it, you’re still contributing to a studio that you think highly of and give them the lifeblood to keep making games, which can only be a good thing. In that sense, it isn’t money wasted but instead, an industry supported.

  4. I’m LITTLE over 30, single, no kids, living alone, no day job and I created One More Level. It’s been up for two years now and I do reviews aspect of “an average everyday player”. I’m above an average *the basic thats–what–he/she–said–last–night -joke* but only when I really play something demanding and I want to play it over and over again, such as Resident Evil games. Within four months I got over 35 000 visitors and my google ads being show over million times. I keep no ads on the site, though. I hate them.

    I can somewhat rely with you as we kinda have same situation and reasons why we created our sites. I also don’t have 247 time to play games even though I have the time. I have to do other things such as finishing my novel, sending pathetic requests for developers to give me review copies, cleaning my house, taking my fishes out for walk and take a couple hour nap. I really enjoy you site and gonna add it to, I don’t know, somewhere like a bookmark or something and come reading your stuff again.

    If you want to go and check my site its http://www.onemorelevel.org see ya, dad.

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