AA 8-Bit User Age Demographics

[+MrFish]

Where are we now, and when did it all begin?

[jacobus]

Excellent questions Mr Fish! (although it appears you could extrapolate the answers to one question from the answers to the other)

[+MrFish]

In general, yes. I already predicted the general outcome from having been on here for enough years. It should be interesting to see it on paper though.

[flashjazzcat]

How is it possible to extrapolate the answer to one question from the answer to the other if the date on which one got one's first Atari remains indeterminate? I could have got my first Atari aged fifteen at any time between 1979 and 1988, say. The fact I'm still only twenty-one confuses matters yet further.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

I am 42 right now (until May, then I am 43) and got my first Atari 800XL in 1984, when I was 12 years old...

 

and errm, I was born in the same year as Atari

[Mr.Amiga500]

Even though I desperately wanted an Atari 800XL back in 1984, I didn't get one until decades later.

[w1k]

nice pool

[AtariGeezer]

I'm 55 now and bought my 800 new in 1981 when I was 22....

[+bcombee]

I got an Atari 800 for Christmas in 1982 when I was eight years old. We already had an Atari 2600 then, and I'd already been reading books on BASIC programming from my elementary school in hopes that I'd get a computer. I just turned 40 in June and still have my 800 and the 130XE that we got as an upgrade in 1985.

[+slx]

Unless we pass on the torch the Atari-aware population is doomed to die out rather suddenly in about 40 years. It was just today that I mused whether 6502s and ANTICs would outlive me in working condition....

[+Stephen]

Awesome - I made it into the youngest age bracket

[snicklin]

It would be interesting to see the split between the ages of 30-34 and 35-39 and 40-44 and 45-49. I suspect that there are not that many 30-34 year olds.

[+ZuluGula]

I tought the same. I was born in 1975 and I'm closer to 40 than to 30. Got my first Atari when XE came out but played 2600 before.

I would suspect that most A8 owners were born betwen 1970 and 1980.

[tep392]

I tought the same. I was born in 1975 and I'm closer to 40 than to 30. Got my first Atari when XE came out but played 2600 before.

I would suspect that most A8 owners were born betwen 1970 and 1980.

Based on the above poll, I would say most were born between 1965 and 1975.

[ApolloBoy]

I'm 25 and I got my first A8 when I was 14, I suppose that makes me the youngest by far so far.

[+wood_jl]

 

YOU BUNCH OF OLD FARTS!!!

 

(just kidding; I'm right there with you, and I clicked the most popular selections for both questions)

[TheEditor]

48, almost 49 here, got my first 800 when I was 14

[+MrFish]

YOU BUNCH OF OLD FARTS!!!

 

(just kidding; I'm right there with you, and I clicked the most popular selections for both questions)

 

Sorry if this comes as a painful reminder to some. :-P I'm right in there too though. But my main interest was to see where some of the dividing lines are, and to see how many we have coming in on the fringes.

[Mclaneinc]

I hit 54 in June, I was there before all this home computing and arcade games started and feel so bloody privileged to have seen it, all these youngsters who wax on so much about their Xbox ONE or PS4 saying how brilliant a game looks as if all this happened in their time, well I poke my tongue out at them because i saw it from the birth and I've played games that started all this and still play better than some of the rubbish today..

 

But don't get me wrong, there's some BRILLIANT games on all the machines through the years, ground breaking stuff everywhere, never limit yourself to a single platform....

Edited January 11, 2015 by Mclaneinc

[Sikor]

and errm, I was born in the same year as Atari

As I ;P

[jacobus]

How is it possible to extrapolate the answer to one question from the answer to the other if the date on which one got one's first Atari remains indeterminate? I could have got my first Atari aged fifteen at any time between 1979 and 1988, say. The fact I'm still only twenty-one confuses matters yet further.

Given that the Atari computers are between 35 and 25 years old (30 +/-5) and (based upon the poll results) our average age is between 40 and 49, we can extrapolate the most common age at purchase as being between 10 and 20 years old. Which matches up nicely with the age poll!

 

I understand that intense coding sessions can mess with the flow of time, but in my experience, the phenomena tends to accelerate time rather than reverse it. Perhaps the fountain of youth lies in the writing of GUI interfaces ....

 

 

Unless we pass on the torch the Atari-aware population is doomed to die out rather suddenly in about 40 years. It was just today that I mused whether 6502s and ANTICs would outlive me in working condition....

Which will be know to future historians as the great die-off.

[Mr.Amiga500]

I've been noticing a disturbing trend recently* - time seems to be accelerating! A year used to be a long time. Now it seems a year passes by while I'm eating a packet of peanuts. Brush my teeth - another year gone! What the hell is happening?! It's 2015?? We've gone beyond Buck Rogers' flight in 1987, somehow missed the Skynet nuclear war of 1997, passed the far future of Space 1999, and now we're in Marty McFly's alternate future (minus the 3D shark). Pretty soon we'll have to get a Blade Runner ("he say you brade runner") to kill replicants in 2019.

 

Just last week... or was it 7 years ago... I became a member here to talk about Atari games I played the month before, in 1984. Now slx reminds us that in 40 years we'll all be dead. That's like 13 days in accelerated time. Oh man, life is short. I better hurry up and finish that game of Blue Max.

 

 

*recently, meaning the last couple decades or so

Edited January 11, 2015 by Mr.Amiga500

[flashjazzcat]

Given that the Atari computers are between 35 and 25 years old (30 +/-5) and (based upon the poll results) our average age is between 40 and 49, we can extrapolate the most common age at purchase as being between 10 and 20 years old. Which matches up nicely with the age poll!

Of course it works in retrospect if you have already established (via the other question) that most people here first got their first machine during a specific time-frame (i.e. "back in the day"). I didn't assume that as a known value, although it's hardly surprising that it turns out to be the case for the most part.

 

I understand that intense coding sessions can mess with the flow of time, but in my experience, the phenomena tends to accelerate time rather than reverse it.

That's one way of looking at it. I think one thing common to all of us is that we've never really "grown up".

[+Stephen]

Sorry if this comes as a painful reminder to some. :-P I'm right in there too though. But my main interest was to see where some of the dividing lines are, and to see how many we have coming in on the fringes.

I'll be 40 this August, and it was on my 7th b-day I got the 400. So yeah - I'm teetering on the edge of that age dividing line

[ClausB]

I had already figured I was at the older end of both scales.