do old gamers just get tired and fade away

I read that Miyamoto-sensei doesn't play games any more. It has even been said that he is responsible for Nintendo's drift away from the hard-core gaming people towards the women and their ilk who like the Wii and Dr Kawashima. Is this a curse - to gradually drift away from games.

I well remember many years ago my teenage son asking me, 'Dad, when I am old, will I like classical music?' I replied, 'Not neccessarily." The relief in his face was tangible! He feared that I, clearly an old fart, only liked classical music because I was, well, an old fart. And so, when he achieved fart-hood, he too would degenerate into liking the naff.

But, I have always loved classical music. It is to me the nearest thing to heaven on this rather cruddy and crummy earth. I was born into loving it, and I still relax and depart the ills and hurts of this life through Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert and Elgar (well, his 'Gerontius', anyway, the rest of his stuff is often pretty pap.)

As we grow oder, some thing do change. But others do not. And here I have to confess ... I used to play lots and lots of games, but now I do not. I have become a non-gamer. Other things come and go. I used to be a prolific programmer, but I woke up and it bored me. I used to play jazz horn, but I realised I wasn't very good (merely good) and so moved on. I tried painting, but I only sketch landscapes now cos I aint very good at people and animals.

Yet, games remain a huge part of my life. Not least because I teach games. And - here's the rub, most games academics I know don't play games any more. Imagine a musician who didn't listen to music, or a painter who didn't visit art galleries, or a footballer who didn't go to football matches, or a theatre critic who didn't go to the theatre.

That's a rich mix, and as I put it together I could see parallels. For there are football fans who don't go to see football matches, and there are followers of Formula 1 racing who have never seen a racing car, and train spotters who never go on trains, and people who buy fishing gear but never get round to going fishing, or people with an expensive personal gym of keep-fit equipment who never use it, etc.

The list of human oddness is endless. We are complex beings. It is simply a fact. As a wise man said, I don't do the things I ought to do and I do the things I ought not to do (try saying that late at night!)

So, I teach games. I get games. I enjoy designing games. I enjoy seeing my students design and create games. Games are for me a medium to learning. I suppose there are French teachers who never go to France.

On the very odd end of the scale I knew someone, studying Arabic at St Andrews University, who was rebuked by her professor, 'My dear, your spoken Arabic is execrable.' Her reply was succinct, 'Oh, but I never talk to Arabs!' And she got her degree with honours.

Strange thing, life ...