We Might Miss Out on Immortality, but at Least We’ll Have Geriatric Gaming

I have this fear, right. Fear of missing out. Not, like, having to work instead of hitting “the big party” next weekend or whatever (frankly that sounds far too social and I’d appreciate the excuse). This is more of a crushing, existential FOMO. You know the kind. I fear I might just miss out on immortality. And not just me, by the way. Unless you’re still truly swaddled in the blissful, carefree embrace of early youth, this almost certainly applies to you too. Sorry, pal, you’re now the company for my misery.

See, extending life is no longer exclusively within the realm of science fiction. It’s now possible to raise the topic in everyday conversation and not look like you’re a couple of fingers short of a KitKat. Biologists continue to take steps towards reversing ageing in mice, and one very, very dedicated millionaire is currently going to some pretty extreme lengths to rejuvenate his biomarkers and live longer, with mildly promising results. OK, that guy might not be quite the full bar, but it’s hard to deny that there’s a sense of cautious optimism around this subject within the scientific community and beyond. 

We’re a ways off for now, sure, but imagine the breakthroughs in the next, say, 70 years. That’s a lot of decades of research, some of them potentially bolstered by AI learning. If you were to ask this hilariously, ridiculously uninformed videogame journalist about timeframes, I’d say that’s right about the amount of time we might need to figure out a way to halt ageing in humans. Sadly, I will have shuffled off by then, and (again, sorry pal) you probably will have, too. We’ll miss it by the finest of temporal hairs.

To really grasp how close we’ll get (just to make sure we properly ruin our week), let’s calculate that as a percentage of human history. Let’s say our crew, the Homo sapiens, appeared 250,000 years ago, which is about the most conservative estimate. And we’ll give scientists a century from now to perfect some form of age-halting technology, again, to be conservative. Optimistically putting my shuffle-off age at 80 means I’ll miss the most important technological advance of our species by about 65 years. That’s 0.026% of human history. You might get within 0.018% if you’re a young ‘un. If it happens sooner, we could be less than 0.01% away. Truly, we’ve stepped onto the platform right as the train of eternal life inches forward and away forever. Quality. 

You about ready for the but? It’s a good one, I swear. But — our old folks’ homes will be filled with game consoles. Filled with ‘em! Imagine it: Nintendo GameOrbs and Xbox X File Ones as far as the milky, cataracted eye can see (and those will be the names, mark my words). Admittedly, this is a bit of a meagre consolation prize in comparison to living forever, but it’s better than it sounds, and I’m not sure people appreciate how radically different a generation of retired gamers will look to the stereotypical elderly image we have today.

Videogames are truly mainstream these days, and there’s unlikely to be such a leap in technology that Millennials and Zoomers will be left behind. We’re a tech-savvy bunch and, chances are, we’ll stay fairly current as things develop. Not the case for social media of course, which will probably leave us in the dust if it hasn’t already (remind me again why people are making weird faces and shouting “gang gang” over and over on Clik Clok?). But with gaming tech, I reckon we’re pretty safe. 

For me, that totally changes the notion of old age. You might be physically unable to do the kind of adventuring you once enjoyed, but you can sure as heck do it digitally. And if you were to think back to a time when gaming was the most enjoyable for you, I’m betting you’d go straight to your teens or maybe earlier. And why’s that? It’s because you had absolutely no responsibilities. No niggling guilt about being less productive than you could be dampening your immersion. You know when you’ll next be free of that baggage? That’s right, bring on the retirement years!

Those “blue collar” games of the PowerWash Simulator or House Flipper variety could take on a whole new significance for the older demographic. Jumping back into the 9 to 5 grindset could be a therapeutic *shudder* novelty in that context. One could easily imagine intricate, fully fleshed-out economic sandboxes — a kind of GTA but with more bankers or a hyper-sophisticated Monopoly scenario — materialising over the next few decades to allow the old folks to once again, or for the first time, feel the capitalistic rush of investing big and snorting hard. Virtually, that is, although who knows where the hardware will be at that stage. 

It’s true that books already exist, offering escapism that’s about as accessible as you could hope for, but surely even the snobbiest of bookworms would admit that the immersion to be found in the printed word might struggle to compete with that of a fully interactive world. Maybe that’s debatable, but there’s no doubting the instant gratification of videogames, and while that can be a dangerous thing in excess for younger generations, you’d think it’s likely to be in pretty short supply for the average nursing home resident. 

So, what the heck, we won’t live forever, but we can go out with a geriatric bang slaying whatever unspeakable virtual baddies have appeared on the scene by then. Or just washing patios. That’d be cool, too. Really, I should just be grateful to have lived through the golden age of gaming, which was, of course, the ‘90s, and hope that the home I end up in has HDMI sockets for my SNES Mini.