From Writing Games in My Youth to Facing Ageism in the Workplace

Рет қаралды 2,554

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 55

@thewholls7176 2 ай бұрын

Good job mate. I used to have a Commodore VIC 20 - 5KB of RAM which was the poor cousin to the Commodore 64. They had memory expansion cartridges. You could push into the back of the keyboard and get extra memory. Nowadays if you go into a computer place and get a Desktop box built and you ask them for a CD drive they give you the side and say what the hell do you want that for? …….

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Oh I had one of those too. My very first compter.

@chazlewis8114 2 ай бұрын

As a 42 year old indie game dev (also from Aus) I really appreciate hearing about your experience! I sometimes fantasize about how much "easier" it must've been with less competition in the past. But you've definitely given me a better perspective on that.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Oh yes far less competition. Much smaller audience too. The thing that frustrates me lately is almost every idea I have has at least 10 freeware products that do the same thing, which results in me not going any further. Unless you can find something very specific it's hard to compete against the big teams with lots of marketing capital.

@Soso-km8er 2 ай бұрын

It is really hard to hit the sweet spot in IT. There were many chances in the past to hit it big and I missed them all 😂. Dotcom-Bubble, Consulting for todays rates at the-day-before-yesterday prices, early Don’t-be-evil-get-Rich-quick-Google, Blockchain, AI. Most game developers in the 1980s didn’t make big money, most got ripped off. But they sure had fun. Today’s competition in everything is crazy. Not just from a technical point of view, also from the business side. Companies happily pay dozens of people to do in 3 years what 2 guys and some pizza would do better in a year if given permission. It’s hard to compete with stupid.

@jaykay5142 2 ай бұрын

I'm a tad bit younger than you but still remember doing the same kind of things, programming my own games, especially text adventure games were so much fun. Those times were really good for software people.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Yeah. The market is totally saturated now, and full of malware and spam which annoys me to no end. Even Adobe is doing it.

@jaykay5142 2 ай бұрын

@AgeBlocked one thing that really helped me out early on is seeking employment in the US. It would have been a different story if I would have stayed in 🇨🇦. Those folks have been seeing really hard times for many years now.

@lindc1070 2 ай бұрын

Interesting and scary how technology has changed over our lifetime.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

More sophisicated, but its been much of the same. Except for AI. I see many jobs going soon.

@lindc1070 2 ай бұрын

@AgeBlocked the sophistication and advancement are big things in the sense of impact. Just like A1 is changing the job scene.

@lindawilson795 2 ай бұрын

Congrats on this achievement during your youth .🎉🎉🎉🎉

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Thank you so much!!

@manfredmann2766 2 ай бұрын

True Basic (do while and do until loops) was definitely an eighties language!! Used to play Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand in the early eighties on an Apple 2.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

That was my next computer. An Apple II clone (remember those?) . Couldn't afford the real thing.

@walsakaluk1584 2 ай бұрын

You're a regular polymath mate! Great stories. 🙏

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

I think of myself as a Jack of all trades, but master of none.

@walsakaluk1584 2 ай бұрын

@AgeBlocked A jack of all trades is still better than a master of one.

@lindc1070 2 ай бұрын

@@AgeBlocked" A Jack of all trades is master of none but often times better than master of one." William Shakespeare

@ccl1195 2 ай бұрын

Wow! Cool video man. I'm trying to make a game as a solo guy, for Unity. It was really interesting to hear about the game, and the specifications of the hardware. Right now I'm trying to learn all about data serialization, so hearing about the memory, the tables, and so forth was really fun.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for the feedback. I also played with Unity for a while. It's a fantastic package.

@ianhart356 2 ай бұрын

Liked your game writing story. Very clever!

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Hey, thanks!

@gammalgris2497 2 ай бұрын

Reminds me of my first steps with home computers at the end of the 80s. I lacked a lot of basics and still managed to make a rather small text adventure and text based side scroller. maybe i might go back and do a project just for the nostalgia.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Be fun to do it in a more modern language!

@LifeStyle2014 2 ай бұрын

Are you able to make a video playing the game? Would be interesting

@catsupchutney 2 ай бұрын

That would be as interesting as watching Gordon Ramsay eat soup.

@joefer5360 2 ай бұрын

@@catsupchutney I'd watch it. I watched Gordon Ramsey eat the nastiest of food in 2010 with Kitchen Nightmares. A video of him just eating soup would be great.

@LifeStyle2014 2 ай бұрын

@@catsupchutney coming from someone who has 65 subs and post videos of a stupid cat, your opinion is very irrelevant 😂

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

I've got no way of running it. That demo I showed was a game console emulator website and they would not have heard of my program as it never made overseas.

@Mel-mu8ox 2 ай бұрын

I'd love to learn to write Basic... But there're no jobs in my area that need it :/ At least with Basic and C, the language doesn't rapidly evolve... often feels like the moment I learn something, I have to rush to relearn another thing that just had an update and now has a new industry standard. Experience means nothing. because everything you do becomes outdated so fast. Jobs want experience in the tech their currently using... but when its a new tech, how are you supposed to have experience in it???

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Yes this is why IT is one of if not the worst occupation for older people. You constantly have to compete with 25 year olds with the same experience in the current fad.

@Sunshine-zi4nq 2 ай бұрын

You are talented and creative. Pity it wasnt appreciated when you were younger

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Managers/companies seem to not be interested in achievers, only the ones giving the best lip service I've found.

@transitengineer 2 ай бұрын

Thank you, for sharing this reminds me of when, I was writing simple computer programs. This was back in the early 1980's, while earning my B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering. Question, does anybody know of an Android smart phone software application that will let you set ring tones whenever, you receive a new "text" message? In 2024, almost nobody in my professional networks knows how to call me on my smart phone (which, would ring) or to leave me a voice mail. (smile ... smile).

@transitengineer 2 ай бұрын

@Carrie-n2n Thank you, for your response to my question. Please list two or three of these applications for me. I am will to pay so, they do not have free applications.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for the sharing the memories. Surprising people don't know how to call your phone. Even my almost 90 year old mother can call someone on her phone.

@transitengineer 2 ай бұрын

@@AgeBlocked Sorry, I was being a bit funny saying "they did not know how to make a telephone call to a smart phone". It is more that, they want to reach me right away and send me one "text" message. The next day, they then ask me why, I did not respond and my reply is did you call me? they say no, did you leave me a voice mail message? they say no (smile ... smile).

@stephenhookings1985 2 ай бұрын

Apparently kzbin.info/www/bejne/qnLWYoqcjauCiJYsi=ItRBpI8MtzJN-MU5 I used to have the two mice humping in the wall from Family Guy as a ringtone. I thought it was possible to change ring depending on caller - not sure about texts. People rarely text - WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram?

@Lion_McLionhead 2 ай бұрын

Upload the audio from the tape in FLAC format & get someone online to play it in an emulator.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

I didn't know these files could be played like an audio file and turned to flacs. If I can source a tape recorder I can do that.

@AlistairBrugsch 2 ай бұрын

@@AgeBlockedyes they can just be played with a normal tape player (assuming the tape hasn't disintegrated) record the audio into your PC and it can be turned into a .tap file (I think it's just a regular audio file but not sure exactly what encoding) and .tap files can be used in an emulator (VICE on PC or others on your phone even) Chances are it's been uploaded to an archive somewhere it was actually published (no matter how small and regional the publisher) Someone I worked with wrote a personal project spectrum game back in the day and sure enough it was in a speccy games archive so we loaded it into an emulator and he got to see it again some 20 years after he wrote and forgot about it

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

That's awesome. I had no idea about that. That tape of mine would be about 45 years old now.

@Mike-B. 2 ай бұрын

Perhaps consider reframing or retargeting this video toward young programmers. Many youngsters have no idea that this is how it once was....

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

Originally it was just going to be one of those career experience videos, then at the last minute i added my 2 cents of ageism into it :)

@manfredmann2766 2 ай бұрын

True! However, many of them are age blocked too.

@Meleeman011 2 ай бұрын

you wrote zork? holy crap dude. i never thought i'd meet you wtf

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

hsha no. The game I wrote is the same type of game. Was using it as an example to show what a text adventure looked like.

@samuelbanya 2 ай бұрын

Yeah but realize what you're competing with: AI based keyword resumes that match a job system's ATS, outsourcing, and overall emphasis on having an amazing portfolio outside of work.

@AgeBlocked 2 ай бұрын

In the end, the companies are reducing their own customer base. I don't see the point in it apart from just scraping up a bit of extra cash for themselves.