I recently had a chance to talk to one of the more famous female gamers for a Girls Don’t Game exclusive interview. So who’s the special lady? Well, it’s none other than Old Grandma Hardcore, the gaming granny with a mouth worse than the foulest of foul sailors who makes the Angry Video Game Nerd look tame. You may have seen her on YouTube, or on MTV, or maybe you even read her blog–we know we do!

Read on to find out this 71-year-old’s stance on PC gaming, her fame, and high gaming hopes for 2008.

Monique: So some of us are wondering what’s your favorite game of all time and why? Least favorite off the top of your head?

Grandma: This is a hard question to answer, anymore. It used to be I could just say ‘Final Fantasy VII’ and feel pretty happy about the answer, but games have been really good recently. Resident Evil 4, Bioshock, Resistance: Fall of Man, everything on The Orange Box, Super Paper Mario, Fatal Frame II, Dead Rising… see, then I get myself in trouble because I keep feeling like there is one more game on the tip of my tongue that I really, really loved and the list just keeps going.

As far as least favorite in recent memory, I guess I’d say Driv3r: Parallel Lines. That was just a dumb, shitty game.

Monique: How do feel about gaming and females as a demographic? In a recent post on your blog, you predicted gaming in ten years as a more censored and less than ideal environment due to an influx of older gamers and gaming as a whole becoming mainstream. Do you think then that females will have an adverse effect too?

Grandma: I don’t really think that more females have an adverse effect. Women gamers are pretty much the same as men gamers as much as we don’t want to admit that. We’re not better. Or worse! We’re pretty much the same. It’s not because of more older gamers either. It’s too easy, I think, to blame any one group for what’s happening to the gaming industry as far as censorship goes, but I will anyway because it’s too complicated.

I think it’s the parents of this country. Men and women alike.

You have otherwise intelligent people who might even have been gamers themselves who now have kids, which is a scary thing to go through, I know, and they get nervous about every little thing that passes through their kid’s minds. They are so paranoid they are going to fuck up their children by letting them do something they themselves have done that they start to look everywhere for someone or something to blame when they find out their very special little boy or girl isn’t like the kid in Sleepless in Seattle that they thought they were.

They get a call from a teacher who says they acted up in class or they told a teacher off or she isn’t doing their homework or he just has an apathetic attitude about everything and they think “alright, what caused it.” And instead of seeing that… gap or whatever you want to call it in their kid’s life where they no longer are, they see the stuff that fills it up. They blame MySpace, they blame Xbox, they blame Rockstar Games, they blame text-messaging, they blame that new friend they’ve seen over the house once and a while to play Guitar Hero and they blame Guitar Hero, too.

But they never blame themselves! These people aren’t stupid, they’re just lazy. But not lazy to the point where they don’t vote, unfortunately.

Monique: The other day my co-worker and I had an argument if grandma was real or not. He simply wouldn’t believe it. How does it feel to know people talk about you guys daily? How has the popularity affected you two? I mean, some of your videos have gone viral. How do you stay true to yourselves and gaming while in the spotlight?

Grandma: It feels WEIRD! If your friend is really that skeptical tell him…well, I don’t know what the hell to tell him. Here I am! I’m here! I’m pretty sure I’m real, anyway. It does feel strange when I see YouTube comments even now that say I’m not holding the controller right so it’s got to be fake, or that it’s just not possible for me to play games, it’s like… how much more proof do you want? I think it’s when it stopped being about proving that I exist and when it started where I just get to talk about games that it really became fun. No, I don’t think the popularity has affected us. When I was on the radio and on the news and in newspapers and everything, that was what it was, I mean, both of us knew it was just a tiny little 15 minutes of fame because they needed a human interest thing for that moment in time. If I was getting paid to endorse some game that would be one thing, but I’m not. It’s just me and my chair, same as everybody else. Remember too, this is the internet, I’m not all that unique. There are lots of older, women gamers out there who definitely do a hell of a lot better in some of these games than I do. It keeps us humble.

Monique: I’ll be sure to show him this interview. So, have you ever considered PC gaming?

Grandma: I’ve tried, but I’ve never had a PC that could handle anything better than Civilization II with all the effects turned off. Everything I try to play just crashes. They crash sometimes on the console, too, but it seems like I can never get it right on the PC. Now, Annie sent us Neverwinter Nights 2 and I played that on Tim’s computer, but I’m pretty embarrassingly bad when it comes to using a mouse and keyboard to do something I’ve spent so many years doing on a controller. I check my email, read the news, read all the gaming sites and blogs and check the weather, I look on GameFAQs and YouTube for tips sometimes, and maybe look up some recipes but beyond that I’m pretty sure my computer hates me. I just have to get used to the thing.

Monique: PC gaming isn’t for everyone. It’s so expensive these days… Anyway, what game is grandma looking forward to most in 2008?

Grandma: Christ, I don’t know- there’s a few that were delayed to 2009 but I think Little Big Planet is coming out this year, Final Fantasy XIII (if they keep what they did with XII going it’s going to be goddamn beautiful), Resident Evil 5 was delayed, I still haven’t picked up Super Mario Galaxy yet, but that was from last year and I really, really want to play that again, all I got to play was the demo at E3 during 2006; I want to pick up Crysis, there’s a few more I’m looking forward to whose names escape me right now. And goddammit they need to release a Fatal Frame game on a next gen system. Other than Bioshock I haven’t played anything really scary in awhile.

Monique: Can grandma adopt us? Please?

Grandma: Sure! Everybody just calls me Grandma anyway. It’s like I got one big extended family out there. Lots and lots of grandchildren.

Monique: Any last words? Feel free to soapbox it.

Grandma: Oh, I really don’t know what to say. I’m just glad I get to bullshit about games with people. More than gaming I love talking to people. I’ve met so many really cool, smart people from my age all the way on down through gaming. But I will say this: I feel really bad when I’m playing Call of Duty 4 or something and a message pops up that someone wants to play with me and I just can’t because I’m stuck trying to get to a checkpoint somewhere and can’t respond in time. Please don’t think I’m rude or ignoring you! I play against people sometimes but I think I’m just not that fast yet for multiplayer. I just don’t want people to think I’m ignoring them, I try to answer all the messages.

Also, when you send me a message on PSN or XBL with audio, I can’t hear you most of the time! It’s not because you’re too quiet it’s because I’m too damn deaf. I have to get Tim or somebody to tell me what you’re saying. I’ll send you a voice message back if you want, but I need text, otherwise it’s just mumbling noises and the occasional Xbox Live Vision Camera picture of a blurry penis. If you’re going to do that, do it right, turn the little focus ring thingy on the front!

Monique: Oh God, thanks for that imagery. I’m never getting a Xbox 360 now. But seriously, thanks for the interview. You are by far the coolest grandma we’ve seen! Keep on gaming!

For those who haven’t a clue who “Grandma” really is, below is a video of grandma herself, playing Resistance: Fall of Man on her new PS3:

Yeah, I bet you want her to adopt you now too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Gamer Culture, Interviews, Video Game Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.