How I Got into Gaming :: An Old Lady discovers a Wonderworld

hello everyone today is a historic day for me at least as you can imagine i've had the question put to me how did you get into gaming britta many many times practically as long as i've had the channel and the answer is not a straightforward one it's quite a story it's quite a journey i was sort of getting ready to tell that story just over a year ago [Music] those of you who've been around for at least that long like a year and a half will probably remember that back then in 2020 it was a very difficult time for me and the channel due to a huge influx of people and an overwhelming amount of highly unpleasant and and negative comments in particular in the comments for individual videos which was the reason why i shut those down so by the time i had shut down the comments on the videos and was just letting things settle i had a good hard think about this project for doing a video about how i got into gaming because inevitably i think for anyone that would be quite a personal story it concerns your personal life you know how you started gaming and what gaming means to you and in my case there was a particular angle that involved some very personal information concerning me and poodle power that i decided was simply not safe for me to discuss in public so i hope you will understand that today i am ready to tell you the story but there is one part of it that is highly private that i'm not going to go into details it doesn't really matter for you understanding how i got into gaming so i've learned a lot in the last couple of years and there are certain things that i believe firmly should stay private even for channels that like mine give you a bit of an insight into my life so with all that out of the way all i just want to say especially remembering that back history with the comments on my channel please remember to keep it friendly and respectful this is supposed to be a friendly and enjoyable space for people to talk about their favorite hobby how did it all start well you know sometimes backtracking is difficult because you don't lead your life keeping a sort of diary well maybe some people do but i don't certain things tend to get a bit lost in the mists of time especially at my age but i do remember one fizzle i had back in the early 2000s i was working with computers with networks with servers and that was really my life and my main interest was very techy and i was certainly aware that there were video games on pc it just had never sort of tickled my interest so to speak but in 2004 and i still got the invoice i got a new computer for windows xp and it was a mini bare bones kit a little shuttle beautiful little computer now that came with a gigabyte geforce fx 5900 video card sporting 128 megabytes of ddr memory the whole thing ran an intel pentium 4 2.8 gigahertz so it was a very sleek and fast little unit for the time and it came with several discs one of them was for a tomb raider video game this particular computer was sort of promoted as being ideal for running this tomb raider game and other pc games you will be amazed and i didn't really think further about it until one day i had a bit of time on my hands which was unusual and i saw this disc lying around and i thought oh i wonder how that works i'll just pop it in the disc tray and you know what happened the thing wouldn't even boot up i was not impressed now i wasn't exactly ignorant about computers so i fiddled around a bit i then did what on any self-respecting techie does i went online and i looked around for information and i found several forums including the steam communities all discussing this game and how to get it to run on pcs now the game well you will ask me which game it was but i honestly don't remember i think it must have been the one published in 2003 called the angel of darkness which google tells me has not got a very good score card anyway i looked online and the advice was extensive you had to do all sorts of stuff to you you know to tweak your computer fiddle with the windows system files do all sorts of stuff if you follow the whole thing it would take anywhere between two and four hours of really hard work i tried some of the quick fixes but nothing worked and i thought what am i doing this was supposed to be just a brief respite amongst the workload just a bit of enjoyment and relaxation this feels like work having to you know fiddle with files it's like me trying to track down something on an email server that isn't working i thought this is crazy if this is what gaming is like you can keep it i'm not interested and i took the disc and i remember that and i aimed it at the waste paper basket and the dogs were watching me like what's that what's she throwing away is it food and i threw it into the basket and outed wind and i never thought about it again honestly that was it [Music] of course consoles even the word gaming console meant nothing to me i'd never seen one the word console i would have associated with a piece of old-fashioned furniture you know like a buffet or something it just wasn't there in my world so now we um fast forward to 2012 um the end of the year [Music] and this is when poodle pound i went through a really sad and very traumatic period in our lives all i can say is anyone who's been through a major trauma major grief will know what i'm talking about i mention it because this explains everything about how i got into gaming because as many people said normally you wouldn't associate a 60-something year old woman with saying oh i think i'll try out some video games it's not the first thing that would spring to mind i i quite accept that but that's of course the question that most people mean when they asked me but they asked me they're trying to be polite so they just say how did you get into gaming meaning how does someone of your age 60 plus suddenly pick up a console and a controller and start playing video games and not just a little bit casually on the side but you know with real dedication for that you need to know that it was a terrible time in our lives and we suffered from severe depression because of that and i just want to say here because this is really really important and you never forget that kind of pain and trauma and grief [Music] if you are going through anything like that that is causing you such severe pain that you find it difficult getting up in the morning and just facing life please please please don't suffer in silence on your own go and seek help [Music] people who are really close to you will usually empathize a a huge amount that can be helpful and it's always good to have family and friends about in a situation like that but sometimes i know it can be overwhelming sometimes it is actually better to have a third party who is removed from you look at your situation and just try and counsel you through it and that's what poodle part i did in the end uh we we had a counselling session and uh later on i i booked another one i was actually quite amazed we hadn't expected much but if you see someone who is properly qualified and registered etc my experience was a very positive one and i would recommend it not because this person has the magic key that can suddenly take away all your pain and make you feel okay again the next day that's cloud cuckoo land that just doesn't exist that doesn't happen and uh none of these um councillors or other professionals would ever claim to be able to do that but i found it really helpful to have someone who didn't know us and talks to us in the professional capacity but still has that empathy that brought a different angle to everything and the one thing that was really important for us i felt was what i call the validation that they take you seriously you don't have to somehow explain or justify who you are or what you're going through they accept you and your experience at your word because one of the reasons is they have seen it so many times before you only know your own pain and you think you might be the only person going through this but you aren't there are many many others out there they can assure you that it'll probably take a long long time until you come out at the other end but that you will and you can do it and to us that was really important it it gives you a feeling that just all the amount of love and affection that a family member or friend might pour out that that's not the same thing it's just something from a different angle that tells you you don't have to question yourself over am i justified to feel like this you know should i just try and pretend everything's okay no and if you ever ever hear the words oh don't worry you will get over it that is the most empty meaningless phrase i've heard too many times the truth is you never do get over it and that's something you have to accept you learn to live with what happened and with the pain and you learn to manage it and over time you will build yourself a life that incorporates the difficult and traumatic parts of your life as well as the good things you will end up a different person but i would say probably a better and a stronger one so it's important for me to to try and pass that on especially young people i know often hesitate please do seek help and professional help if you need it so what happened well we had a pretty awful christmas as you can imagine and the problem is when you're in in such a state of trauma that you tend to go round in circles you cannot escape the dreadful circle and you'll know what i mean if you've got one of those pains in your life the question is how to break that circle and with us almost everything failed like you know what i would normally do like pick up a book or sit down and watch a movie with poodle paw no your brain will just walk away and you know go back to the pain that's what happens so we did everything and anything we could think of like you know poodle past started clearing up the garage and and i decided to go through the spare bedroom where i don't know if if you do this but i tend to when i've got something that i don't know where to store away or where to keep and i think now what shall i do with that i shove it under the bed in the spare bedroom we all do funny things so i had a few items there i pulled out and i sorted out and among them was a box i at first didn't recognize and it was this yes a ps3 slim 160 gigabytes of storage those were the days it says on the back start storing everything in one place with so much hard disk space it's easy to save your favorite downloadable games plus movies music and photos the complete entertainment center and i remembered that i had wanted in a sort of competition for you know with the dvd servers i was subscribing to for all our movies and that's what we did back in the day we got discs in the mail and we absolutely loved it it was a great service and they had an online community where everybody could leave short reviews of what they'd watched and they had a sort of rolling competition there i wasn't even really aware of it but i left a review review for a movie that probably very few people know but because i'm heavily into classic movies especially black and white it really appealed to me so when the movie distribution service shut down because everything was going online of course i made sure to grab that particular disc they were giving away discs to subscribers and this was the movie day of roth by carl theodore dreiser filmed in 1943 during the nazi occupation of denmark a day of roth uses the larger narrative of witch hunts in a historical setting at 17th century i think to point out the paranoid obsession of the period and it's it's basically around a love story and if you think of horror and what that genre usually entails this movie has nothing of that it's basically a period drama and it is one of the most horrifying movies i've ever watched it's a bit like a stage play because that's how they did movies in those days but it's just extraordinary if you ever get a chance to see it i would recommend you do so it's quite an experience anyway i left a short review of this movie obviously very positive one and a few weeks later i got an email saying congratulations spreader you were the winner of our movie review competition and you've won a and i thought what have i won some some really neat electronic gadget you know something i can use with my computer a playstation 3 and i thought what the heck is a playstation 3 oh i'd seen the posters up in the mall there was a shop called eb games and i'd seen posters for playstation and xbox and nintendo so i i knew the names and i thought of all the useless things to win i would win [Music] that and i shoved the box i didn't even open it or anything no no reason to i shoved it under the bed and forgot about it so this must have been the the playstation 3 slim came out in 2009 i looked that up in the latter part so i'm guessing this competition might have been in 2010 when they were given by sony maybe a unit or several for promotional purposes and and that's how i got one so until 2012 the end of 2012 i it was sitting under the bed and i'd forgotten about it well in early 2013 when we were still groping around trying to you know get some kind of normality into our life i found the box and thought i really need to tidy this up i need to get rid of this it's a pretty large box this is where the really strange story starts because you'd think it should be possible to get rid of ie sell or give away or whatever a playstation 3 in 2013 and i found it incredibly difficult it was almost as if that ps3 was clinging on for dear life saying no no no no you're not gonna get rid of me so easily so i took photos of the beautiful pristine sealed box and posted it on our online trading site here in new zealand it's called trademe and i wasn't aware that back in those days they must have had some policy anyway i got an irate email from them saying you can't do that the box is sealed prospective buyers have a right to see what's inside you need to show all the items that are in the box and i thought uh so i can't sell it like new because once i open the box it's second hand oh well i opened the box and i thought well since it's open anyway i might as well have a look at it we had at the time just um bought a new tv set with a recorder that also played blu-ray discs oh yes blu-ray that was a big thing and i had heard being kind of techy and reading all the news that the playstation 3 was one of the earliest machines on the market being able to play blu-ray discs so i thought well that's interesting it's just something for me to do to basically pass the time and i set it all up and i took out some of my favorite blu-rays and test drove them both on our vcr unit and on the ps3 and for about an hour that kept me entertained so to speak just for the record um the ps3 comes out very well um it it was very very hard actually to see a difference between it and the dedicated blu-ray player so i then got all the bits and pieces and thought i now need to take photos upload them to trade me and you know what my camera went bust in those days i still had a digital camera i actually didn't have a smartphone back then i can't remember why i was sort of quite traditional in my computing and i thought oh great what do i do now i bundled up the box and took it down to our local cache and carry now you have to imagine the scene this is this is me arriving um a 60-something old lady with glasses dangling you know and i i stepped inside and there was a sort of somewhat slovenly older man behind the counter and usually people in new zealand are pretty friendly and relaxed you know and i said g'day how's it going um i've got this playstation 3 i don't need it can you sell it because i think that's how it worked they sold on your behalf or something and he looked at me he sort of walled into my eyes with his weasley little pupils and said how do i know that's not stolen goods of all the things that was the one i hadn't expected maybe i should have been aware of it but i wasn't i was just flummoxed i was speechless and i said well well it isn't stolen it's mine i won it and a competition have you got an invoice i didn't have an invoice because i'd wanted in a competition they'd just send a little congratulations note with it i didn't think that after over two years i'd be lucky enough to get some kind of invoice out of them so i trundled out of that cash and carry again lugging that quite heavy box and i was beginning to get a bit fed up and so i left it standing in the hallway to remind me to do something about it and every time i walked past i would stub my toe on it and usually utter a few choice words but the ps3 didn't budge it just it just stayed there and said basically i'm not moving you cabled me up once why not again my final attempt was a strange service that you've probably never heard of called fish pond which is terrible but back then they were still you know quite a big thing and they were at the time offering a service where they would pick up the goods from you advertise them sell them on your behalf and then after deducting a you know a fee you would get the remainder and i thought well maybe that's the easiest option now i didn't have to prove to them that it wasn't stolen goods and i kept a note saying ring them up to arrange this and this is where it gets really strange stranger things have happened but this is strange but true i did not ring and a week passed and another week passed and i still walked past that box and stubbed my toe and i could not understand why i wasn't doing it what was keeping me back so one day when poodle pant i was sitting there yet again saying what do we do what do we do what can we do to take our minds off everything i said this playstation's designed to play games why don't we try that where do you get games and i didn't want to go to eb games and actually buy something because i still wasn't thinking i'd keep the unit and poodlepa said there's the video rental shop downtown and they have some games so we went down to the rental shop and i asked the lady there could she recommend me some games for someone who'd never played before that would be suitable and to her eternal credit she looked at me and she didn't bat an eyelid i surprised predictably she tried to give me something that was considered simple suitable for children i did some backtracking and the playstation trophy list is quite useful for that i figured out that the very first games i got from that rental shop were rise of the guardians brave based on the 2012 movie by pixar which happened to be one of our favorite movies at that time and something called carnival island i can't say that i got along terribly well with the games we had them for one week just a few dollars because they were older games or discounted or something and it was well mainly trying to figure out how does this work how do you use a controller how do you get a character to move how do you open a door you know really really simple stuff but i made some headway the carnival island was that looked pretty horrid i thought was clearly aimed at children but looked pretty cheaply made and yeah i backed out straight away rise of the guardians i didn't realize was based on some movie franchise that i wasn't familiar with so the characters and everything you were dropped straight into the story it didn't make any sense to me i only found out much later that i think the game is actually meant to be a co-op game so me trying to play it on my own didn't work that well and for a rank beginner it it really was difficult that didn't really hit the mark either but the one game that i did respond to was brave [Music] and i backtracked and kept a night i played that in march 2013. now this i know i played quite a bit only recently this year i decided to finally get a physical copy for nostalgia reasons but when i popped it into my ps3 to check it you know i was pulled straight back into the story and the lovely graphics for a licensed game a one based on a franchise which we all know they're usually made for purely monetary reasons and normally not very good i actually think this is pretty decent and i quite like it [Music] um [Music] oh where did she go mom wait come back mom knocking down those trees stop mom you probably didn't ever expect to see a princess chasing a bear through the forest but that's fine i've rarely been accused of acting like a princess i'm meredith my father's daughter that's him fergus the bear king of dunbroch he taught me to ride a horse swing a sword but presiding over the court that's my mother's speciality queen eleanor the diplomat she's always trying to teach me to be a proper princess she doesn't understand me she doesn't even try i wish i wish she were different here's a fine weapon a ball [Music] [Music] um i can't keep chasing her oh this is all that witch's fault ordered the witch to give me a spell demanded it oh what a fool i was father into a bear this is all your fault my fault my fault my fault oh but who am i to refuse the future queen of dunbroch all right but you tricked me hunger and mistrust that's what caused this in the first place magic to help me against the monsters and i noticed that what took me originally an hour to get through just over you know one tiny part of the prologue action i can now skate through in in a few minutes so that tells you how painfully difficult it can be for an older person starting out with something very unfamiliar like video games but the important thing was i'd had that first taste we returned the games i can't remember quite what happened after that but i obviously kept the unit connected up and i continued playing because i have a record of playing in march and then in april and may and i think what happened was that i discovered the playstation network store online mind blown gosh there was so much stuff there amazing and i started wading through everything looking at every game reading all the information i then went online and checked out every game and basically started doing research which is what i always do and simply learning learning learning learning about the history of video games where they all started where are we at now so that was back in 2013 and a whole new world opened up and i think that's what i needed at that point a completely new world that i could not only immerse myself in i mean you can do that with movies and puzzles and books you know if you want to no a world that would so capture every part of me because i had to be so involved i was learning learning learning all the time i was learning physical skills with the controller i was learning about how games work and i quickly discovered what types of games i really liked and i will just go briefly through the the early months um so for april i only have one record showing and that is for flow from the journey collection so obviously i think i bought that collection very very early on so that has journey and ad flower and flow so i definitely was playing flow and you know i play it to this day i always keep it on one of my vetoes i really love that game in may i've got a record for dante's inferno and trine in june it's disgaea 4 and jacob jones which came out at the time for the vita and was my first vita game yes i bought evita in june 2013. in july i played skylanders and i still have the original box with the game and it came with um three figures and this portal thing you needed to put them on so they would pop into the game sort of a bit of a more convoluted amiibo type mechanism i suppose and i got into that a bit and i i was given uh a whole bag full of more figures by our friendly um posty who turned up one day and saw me playing it and said oh i've got all these from my kids you can have them so i had a whole selection of them so i played skylanders in august i played a game that became really important to me and that is hyper dimension neptunia so neptunia why on earth a game like that for an elderly lady who'd never played video games before well you know what it took me to a completely different place and it's funny and humor as we all know is the best medicine weird and wacky is what neptunia the neptunia world is and i still love the intro scene to this game to this day i still think is heaps better than most of the other neptunia game intros no way not even my sister and the other cpus can stand up to her no please stop this if things go on like this game industry will be reduced who are you get out of here [Laughter] fools welcome to your graveyard i've been kept here for three years i've grown bored so you better be fun little toys to play with i don't really get his rambling but he seems fired up i'll handle him compa you hurry and get the cpus yes the shares hides power we might pull through what's this light my eyes my eyes my eyes it's working way to go gear did we make it so here was a completely weird and wacky world that i wasn't quite sure i understood but i thought heck i don't care i'm going along for the ride this was just wonderful so i became an early fan of neptunia and it did wonders for my mental health you never know what's gonna work but neptunia worked it did for quite some time and i've got all the other neptunia games and okay in recent years um they've lost track really of what made the neptunia game so great originally and all the spin-offs yeah i'm getting a bit tired of it but that's the way of life all i can say is at the time neptunia did the trick and i'll be eternally grateful for that nobody's claiming it's the most brilliant game in the world it isn't but it kept me hooked and entertained and smiling and you know just being part of this secret wacky world i tried lots of different games in those early days and i suppose it might be a habit that's just stuck with me that i didn't want to pin myself down i wanted to find out pretty much the whole range and well i knew straight away for obvious reasons that i would never be into sports games or into motor racing games but apart from that i will try almost anything so i don't know if you remember sony's attempts with the move controller which you needed for this game uh called sorcery i've got that controller to this day it's still working another early game i played and i think there were a lot of demos on the playstation network store back in those days i do know that i downloaded a lot of them and and tried them and that's how i you know got onto a lot of the games i then played and one of them now don't laugh don't scoff please it's lair yes i know i know but to me as a beginner that that didn't concern me at the time all the criticism from seasoned gamers all i knew was that i could fly on a dragon and go into battle and that was just amazing and i honestly even as a beginner and with bad hands and all that i did not find the six axis controls as bad as some people made out especially the early reviews i believe they later fixed quite a lot of issues and then of course the dual shock 3 was later changed there were some mechanical technical changes made which um since i only got onto the playstation 3 years after it was released i didn't know about that the dual shock 3 as i know it and that's still my original one that came with the unite and as you can see i practically always play with the cable on because that's how i'm used to doing it as i mentioned in the xbox video the controller worked pretty well for me and lair and i don't remember having any big issues if there were issues i always assumed it was me and my inexperience i can't remember that it ever made the game unplayable for me and to this day i love just occasionally diving into lair and just doing a bit of dragon flying it's really cool now another big thing happened at the time and that was in july 2013 i decided to join playstation plus the reason was that they had two games they offered in their monthly selection that i was just dying to try out and i thought well that's a great way of finding out and i joined the servers and back in those days playstation plus was fantastic because we got not only ps3 games but also vita games and they gave away often that the best games on the veto came to ps plus it was absolutely amazing so you got two ps3 games two veto games and then when the transition happened uh two ps4 games it was a great time to be on playstation and being a ps plus subscriber well the two games that got me into ps plus were yes kingdoms of amalua and you know i love that game because i i did an unboxing video about the ps4 um version not so long ago and the other one yes dragon's dogma another game i absolutely adore and i have it on the ps4 obviously as well that's where i play it now but originally those were the two games that really really got me hooked deep into rpgs the playstation [Music] everything now october 2013 brought another new experience for me in the jrpg world and one that is important to me to this day and you will all know what i mean when i show you this game yes a tales game and tales of graces f was my first ever tales game since then i've bought i think all of them that are available in the west including anything on the ps2 and of course all the ps3 ones and then ps4 ones i absolutely adored grace's i couldn't stop playing it i had to stop playing it because i got stuck i was playing already better by then but let's face it i'd only had like six months of learning on the job so to speak and grace's is not an easy game especially in the latter stages so i got stuck and i simply didn't know how to extricate myself so i put it aside i think now i might be actually capable in terms of being a jrpg player of actually finishing it yes it's been a long journey and it's not easy at my age but as i always say you take one step at a time and you just keep moving so in october i played another japanese game that i absolutely adore and that is okami i first got it on the digitally on the playstation network but since then uh have obviously bought it um physically as well unfortunately it came out on the ps4 too now november brought a game that is still dear to my heart and that is i don't have a physical copy because it doesn't exist for the ps3 it's called rainbow moon that's a little indie game and i started it back then and finished it and platinum did a year and a half later what can i say i just wanted to play it and i just kept playing it it's ideal because it introduces you very easily to the basics of a tactics rpg how to work on a on a grid all the moves etc and how to plan your strategy those were my first footsteps and tactics i think i think i learned well from it it's that basis stood me in good stead and i will always remember rainbow moon really really fondly for that reason and because i enjoyed the heck out of it but once i'd finished it that was great i was ready to move on and as you probably know tactics rpgs is next to dungeon crawlers my favorite subgenre in the rpg bracket now as i mentioned earlier i got a vita in in june of that year 2013. i also got a little 3ds a secondhand one so i started getting into nintendo games i was really really getting deeply into gaming as you can see from that and that year probably july august i can't remember we happened to be downtown and i saw a big sail sign up and i said to poodle pal look at that dick smith electronics are having a huge sale what on earth are they doing getting rid of all their stock well actually that was pretty much what they were doing i can't remember if the shop was preparing to close down but they were certainly getting rid of all all their gaming stock was a sign of the times most general retailers like another electronics retailer and they just didn't want to handle gaming anymore it was just too specialized and area i suppose and one of the things they were getting rid of in 2013 in new zealand was the wii u now i hadn't really planned on buying one there wasn't any overriding reason why i thought i needed one but i was a bit intrigued and i went into the shop and said do you have any wii u's left oh no no no he said they all went like you know hot cross buns at that price they were basically just a third of the regular retail price they're all gone oh i said that's a shame i might have considered getting one he went to his back storeroom and he came back with a box and he said i found one there's one left here you can have that one i thought was a bit of a no-brainer at that price i i grabbed it and you know i'm really glad i did because as a few games for the wii u that that are just timeless for me and and that i really love like wind waker and tokyo mirage sessions i first played on the wii u and of course the one game that only exists on that platform that is trapped there is xenoblade chronicles x and i have mentioned that before obviously in my xenoblade um video but i'm i'm glad i have that wii u if only for that one game that's how important i think it is my life was revolving more and more around gaming and i guess you can all kind of understand that because you're all gamers and you know how you can get transported into the world of whichever game you're playing and you're enjoying it either on your own a single player or with friends online there are so many ways of enjoying games and what was important to me was that i had to use all my capacities you have to use your brain a lot of people out there who know nothing about games think it's really dumb and easy well obviously that couldn't be further from the truth as i found you need a very sharp brain and quick reflexes are a bonus i don't really have those anymore but it certainly helps keeping my reflexes and trim so before i knew it several months had passed and poodle pound i looked at each other and we were actually having some sort of life back it looked different to what we'd had before but it was a life and it was working i don't think you can ask for anything more than that for something to help shepherd you through possibly the darkest period in your life where life just looked almost not worth living so that's basically how i fell into gaming i think if it hadn't been for the um set off rather extraordinary circumstances that i explained earlier it probably would never have happened but life is strange and it will throw you into these situations and you just have to be open to trying something new and in my case the solution was literally sitting there in my hallway constantly causing me to stub my toe on it until i finally gave it a go and found that this was the one thing that brought me solace and i think there is one game above all that exemplifies how much gaming can do for you you all know my love of italia games and in 2014 i finally played my first ever atelier game yes the beautiful atelier aisha i still think it has one of the most gorgeous opening themes of almost any italian game [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] i'll keep calm and do my best i won't let you escape i'll incinerate all in my way you're so troublesome [Music] that was an easy win [Music] now i tell you aisha if you don't know the story revolves around obviously the alchemist aisha who has lost her younger sister she disappeared as presumed dead and aisha decides to go on a journey not only to become a full-fledged alchemist but to try and find out what happened to her much-loved sister and this really really struck a chord with me both the characters and the situation they were in and i could sense the incredible sadness behind aisha's life and i got completely wrapped up in it i went on that journey truly together with aisha i tell you aisha when i finished the main story had shown me that a good video game can be cathartic now i think everybody's different and for for some people going through a trauma they just need something that will take them completely into a world as different as possible away from that experience that they suffered through or were still suffering from and for other people sometimes it's good to go on a very similar journey but in a prescribed environment that's safe like a game is to sort of go through your feelings that way and though it was at times for me a bit sort of i got teary-eyed and all that i would say afterwards i felt incredibly refreshed like i'd been in a very very clear ocean and had a swim and and felt like washed clean the beach was sparkling and the sky was sparkling blue i knew there was another and better day to come and that is a gift that very few things can give us i think sometimes a really good movie or a really good book i mean they will stay with you for a long time throughout your life and thinking back to them you you will find solace in that i think but a game is different because you spend so much time with it especially with an rpg and because you are an agent in the game because without you doing things nothing will happen and to some extent you direct which way the characters and the story goes and to my mind that provides a level of immersion that few other media can match and that makes the experience that much more potent so my experience with atelier asia will also explain to some extent why the italia games are so important in my life it makes sense really doesn't it and i have found that all the atelier games i played after that one all gave me that the kind of experience a feeling of adventure but also comfort that that helps me get through things um because let's face it life is not easy especially nowadays for most of us anything that helps us get through life a bit better is good in my eyes so this also explains my particular attachment to the playstation 3 obviously since i started my gaming life with it and had such a overwhelmingly positive experience with it i cannot relate to to people who niggle about it like on a technical level or something yeah yeah okay okay for me anything in the end is important because of what goes through the heart and i associate a very specific time in my life with the playstation 3 the ups and downs the frustrations over not being able to play certain games not understanding them failing failing again but always getting up and having another go you know developing as a gamer i think it has enriched my life immeasurably and maybe that's also one reason why i feel compelled i suppose to share that experience with other people sometimes to remind them how great games can be because i've had a very compact experience only about eight and a half years but in that time i've done a lot so if i can share all the good things about games with others maybe just make your day a little bit better sometimes that's my way of saying hey i got through a really difficult patch and games do help let's talk about it let's talk about the games let's talk about our experience what it means to us that's what it's all about in the end for me and the moment i don't feel that anymore i wouldn't do it anymore i wouldn't do the channel i wouldn't play the games but honestly i cannot see that day ever coming because as long as there are stories and so many different ways of telling the stories and getting us to live the stories through the game as long as that is there i'm there to play the games follow the story have that experience and share it with you guys [Music] and look at me now i didn't know what a video game was eight and a half years ago really and here i am and what a fantastic time it is to be a gamer and i've got several playstations i've got an xbox now i've got several nintendo consoles i even got a laptop that can play pc games i've got my vitas there are wonderful games for each and every one of these platforms and nowadays most of them are pretty much cross-platform so we can really share them it's a wonderful time i'm enjoying every moment as much as i can because i know what it's like not being able to really feel and experience anything because you're that that low deep deep down in the dumps anything that will help get you out of there is important okay i think i've talked enough that is the whole story all of it from start to finish all i can say is it's my story and if it's helped you in any little way i hopefully have done a reasonable job in explaining what it's like as a 60-something old lady to stumble into video games and discover the most amazing wonder world thank you very much for watching as always please keep well i'm food for dogs bye [Music]

Channel: Britta Food4Dogs

Views: 2,761,872

Keywords: Gaming, Old gamer, Depression, Counselling, Senior gamers, PS3, Video Games, Therapy, Mental Health

Id: 16cxOv2KGLE

Length: 70min 8sec (4208 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 02 2021