MIDLIFE GAMER

Our main goal is to offer a destination for all who are passionate about gaming. A site built on a strong sense of community. A site filled with interesting content. We want to deliver entertaining and informative content of all kinds. Whether it’s with written reviews, previews, news stories and features, or whether it’s through video and audio content. Midlife Gamer is a place where we can all contribute to the commentary about our passion, through site content and the forums.

THE MIDLIFE GAMER CREW

The Founders: Matt (left) and Daren (right)

Matt & I worked together for a time in 2005. We quickly discovered we shared a real passion for gaming. We’d spend hours trading past gaming experiences and entertaining each other with our gaming related stories. Events transpired and I ended up buying a house in the same town and at some point Matt left the company although we maintained contact long after Matt pursued his career elsewhere.

We kept in touch and got together once every so often and the conversation always returned to gaming. In spring 2008 we started to talk about how we could take our common interest and do something interesting with it. The discussion turned to podcasting. We both listened to a wide range of gaming podcasts and would often discuss what we had heard. We agreed that while there was nothing really wrong with what we were listening to, we had an opportunity to do something a little different ourselves. For this reason we started to plan and scope out the ways and means of recording our own podcast, just for kicks.

Our first recording centered around E3 2008. We really enjoyed recording that day despite not having a clue how it was going to turn out. We were really happy with the output at the time and immediately posted it to iTunes just to get it up there. We’ve since lost the original recording, and on reflection, that’s not a bad thing because in reality it wasn’t perfect by any stretch! Nevertheless we got a taste for it and we vowed to continue.

On 28th July 2008 we posted the first regular episode ‘Lemon Party’. We’ve recorded a show every week since, up until December 2011 where we shifted to a fortnightly schedule.

We continue to record and continue to learn. We’re not perfect, we don’t pretend to be. Some of our best material is born out of our mistakes. What we do is what feels right. If it doesn’t feel right we’ll change.

On 1st February 2010 we pressed the big button and launched the new look site. We’re very proud of it, it is nice!

Daren

You can follow us on Twitter: Matt & Daren

The Contributing Editor:

Simon Stevens (SiStevens)

I began my gaming way back on a Grandstand TV Game 2000 before progressing to Atari and eventually Spectrum and Commodore. Via many consoles and handhelds you can now find me rocking the PS3, 360 and PS Vita when work, the good lady and two kids allow it.

Due to the real life stuff my pile of shame knows no bounds and currently sits at almost 300 games with two thirds of them still in the sealed wrapper.

After taking so much from the podcasts and with encouragement from the bearded god Adamski I wrote my first review for the site to give something back which, surprisingly to me, people were actually interested in reading and after a small hiatus from gaming and the site due to the birth of my son I came back with both the longest story for “Soundtrack of our Gaming Lives” for Matt & Daren and the first “MLG Fight Club” article.

After writing numerous articles for the site I was invited to become the new Contributing Editor for Midlife Gamer and, as they say, I haven’t looked back.

You can follow Si on twitter here

The Deputy Editor

Derek McRoberts (DigitalPariah)

Hiya All, the indestructible Scotsman here, or as most people know me, DigitalPariah.

My gaming history mirrors a lot of the staff on here. Starting at a young and impressionable age my introduction to gaming was through my Grandfather who, to keep my sister and I amused after school when we went to their house until my parents came home, purchased a Grandstand 3000 entertainment console. Not satisfied with the various versions of Pong the 3000 gave me, I soon began the hunt for my next gaming fix.

Eventually caving to the pressure I put on them every year, my parents relented and in the winter of 86 I became the proud owner of my first gaming machine, the Commodore C16+4. This, for me, was the point of no return. From here it was only a matter of time before I was the proud owner of a NES and a spanking new Amiga 500 a few Christmases later.

Over the years I’ve owned great consoles (SNES/PS1/Megadrive) and some failed consoles (Saturn/Jaguar/CDi) but one thing has always remained. The love of the games.

Like many of the community, I’m a family man. Owning a PS3, 360, Wii and PC as well as several “on the go” gaming platforms I try to game whenever I have the opportunity.

See you all online…

The Senior Staff Writer:

Jason Currie (currierox)

I still find it hard to believe that it has been nearly three years since I made the decision to sign up to the Midlife Gamer forums. Up to that point the idea of joining a gaming forum seemed quite intimidating, as all I expected to find was people bragging about their “Leet” skills and how much better they were than everyone else. What I found was a welcoming community who didn’t care about such things. It’s all about the community here and that’s why I still love it to this day. It’s also one of the reasons why I decided I wanted to start writing for the site.

The origins of my gaming started way back in 1989. I have some vague memories of playing some stuff before that but I really can’t remember much from that time; just a squirrel in some kind of platformer and I played it on a keyboard. Like I said 1989 was the big year for me. It was when my dad brought home an NES with two games: Super Mario Bros. and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. An addiction was born that day and I dare say so was a Nintendo fanboy. From that day till some time in 2008 I was only interested in Nintendo consoles. Even the PlayStation 1 & 2 passed me by. It was the Wii that ultimately led to me looking elsewhere for my gaming fix. While there are some great games on that system, the ones I was interested in just seemed to be too far and in between. So I turned to the Xbox 360 and found that it had many more games that suited my interest. It was also my first step into online multiplayer, but even that didn’t come till I joined Midlife Gamer. Thanks for popping my online cherry guys, you’re awesome.

When I’m not playing or writing about games I also enjoy reading. My favourite authors are Neil Gaiman, Stephen King and Terry Pratchett. Also loving the Gears of War novels by Karen Traviss.

You can follow Jason on Twitter here

The Community Managers:

Adam Edwards (Adamski)

Family, gaming and science.
I’ve been gaming since my granddad brought home a Grandstand 6000 system. An early ‘Pong’ system. In colour..well, three colours as I recall.
Then it was onto the ZX Spectrum 48k for most of my youth from the early eighties up until I discovered hormones and girls.
A brief hiatus (well, there was a dabble with aMega Drive) until a student grant went towards a SNES. Uni Rally being a standout title for me.
Witnessing Wipeout convinced me to grab a PSOne which started a brief romance with Sony (PSP and PS2).
An original Xbox system found its way into my life like the dirty mistress of gaming some years ago.
Not long after that, I embarked on a long and successful relationship with the Xbox 360 that continues to this day.
Time for gaming is at a premium with family and work commitments, but it makes it all the more enjoyable when I manage to escape.
Here at your service.
Oh, and I like science stuff. And beard grooming.

You can follow Adam on Twitter here

Neale Jarrett (Baron Von Pleb)

A-Hoy-Hoy! My name is Neale Jarrett, but in most criminal organisations people know me as Baron Von Pleb. My official staff title is Community Manager but I am also involved in other aspects of Midlife Gamer. I am one half of the Late to the Party team, an intermittent guest on the Spoiler Alert Podcast and I also write reviews/articles for the site, when the wind is blowing in the right direction. An all-round busy boy.

You can follow Neale on Twitter here

Todd Evans (GoddTodd)

I’m what you might call a Midlife crisis Gamer. My last console was a Sega Genesis. After I put that down, I stopped playing for over ten years until one day I saw this huge Big Daddy in
a Gamestop window, and my imagination was captured. First there were the PC games (Bioshock & Portal), then came the gateway console (Wii), then came one Black Friday in back in 2009. I found myself sneaking off to Target at 04:0o in the morning while my wife was sleeping to pick up a PS3 with Infamous and Batman. And it’s been a rapid decent down the Rabbit Hole ever since.

Well, at least it’s a little cheaper than a Ferrari. ;-)

Because I had been so out of the loop, I started listening to podcasts so that I could find out what cool games I should buy. There were a lot of terrible ones back then where the sum of each review was ‘It’s really good’ and not much else. There were also a lot of American podcasts with adolescent humour. To my great joy, I found two great podcasts that really clicked with me. One is Michael Abbott’s Brainy Gamer podcast, which is all about game theory, the art of play, and game design. I highly recommend checking it out. The other had these two British dudes that were smart, witty, and loved video games. They had sort of a classic Stan and Ollie vibe about them, rather than the kick you in the nuts MTV vibe of many of the other podcasts. In the meantime, whenever I went online, I kept coming across these young American kids who were out to mess with everyone else’s experience and call people racist and homophobic names. The British podcast guys kept waxing poetic about what a lovely forum community they had, so I signed up in the summer of 2010. What a relief it was to find nice, funny, and mature group of people who liked to play videogames. What can I say, I’ve been a virtual expatriate ever since.

If you’re new here to Midlife Gamer, I’d like to wish you as warm of a welcome as I received when I arrived. This is a great group of folks who are really into fun and having a good time. Dive in! The water’s perfect!

You can follow Todd on Twitter here

Ian Brown(Brother Brown)

My gaming career started off with the Mattel Intellivision way back in the day playing Space Spartans and yes it did have the Intellivoice which was a voice synthesis device that let certain games talk to you (I still have it all in the loft). I then moved on to different handheld devices that were the size of shoe boxes, such as Astro Wars and Caveman. My next gaming purchase was the Amiga 1200 and my first completed game was Gods. I discovered lager, girls and then became a Postman so I have never to this day played a Zelda game or touched a Mega Drive although my fascination with handheld gaming continued with the purchases of an N Gage and a Game Gear.

Then came along marriage, the Xbox and the PlayStation. The need to shoot stuff with Max Payne, trying to get that code to see Lara Croft in the shower with no clothes on, combined with sorting a new house out restricted my gaming.

I sort of veered down the Xbox side of gaming when I updated my console, courtesy of a big toy stores cock-up on the payments, this meant I got it free. Approximately six years ago I purchased a PS3 and within a year Mini Me arrived so game time was restricted again although it didn’t stop me purchasing more handheld devices including a PSP and a DSi XL.

Low and behold this all changed two years ago when I joined Midlife Gamer and discovered that:

Jaffa Cakes are in fact not a biscuit!

It is a manly thing to use Veet.

To Fire bomb someone on a raft in the wild west is extremely funny.

I look forward to catching you all online.

You can follow Ian on Twitter here

The Web Developers:

Elsa Bartley

You can follow Elsa on Twitter here

John McCaul

I had a typical childhood playing Link’s Awakening on my Gameboy Colour and Street Fighter 2 on the Mega Drive. I’ve been playing every generation since.

I also enjoy watching movies and TV shows like Game of Thrones, House and Dexter but that’s mostly to appease my good lady. If it were up to me I’d rather game.

Recently I’ve been reading Sci-Fi books and comics on my android tablet (come on Amazon release the Kindle Fire)… I highly recommend Jake Bible’s Dead Mech and The Americans. I work as a Web Developer for a local company and really look forward to helping out with Midlife Gamer. The community is amazing here and they really do go the extra mile for the big meet ups we’ve had.

OUR REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS:

• Adam Riley
• Anthony Bate (Antman)
• Greg Giddens
• Mike Mason
• Chris Cook (BlueWolf)
• Chris Evans
• Chris Mohan (Altered Ego)
• Dave Moran
• Holger Mueller (Oli-1977)
• Jennifer Allen (jenjea)
• Mitchell Norton
• Pete Willington (xeroxeroxero)
• Sam Turner

DO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR MIDLIFE GAMER?

We’re always looking for smart, funny, and insightful content that complements what we’re doing on Midlife Gamer. If your interested in creating content for us then we’re interested to hear from you.

Email Si Stevens (simon@midlifegamer.net) to pitch any reviews or features.

Our contributors guide can downloaded below.

MIDLIFE GAMER CONTRIBUTORS GUIDE

CONTACT US

Unless you’re asking for money to be transferred by Western Union to secure the release of a wealthy African dignitary, we’d love to hear from you.

General contact: admin@midlifegamer.net

For PR enquiries and Press Releases: press@midlifegamer.net

And you can reach the Contributing Editor, Si Stevens, on: simon@midlifegamer.net

You can follow the site on Twitter here.

DONATIONS

If you want to support Midlife Gamer, you can click the button on the right.

Donations are welcome and will be used to pay for hosting the site and producing the podcasts.