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Your Mom And Gaming
Tomorrow is Mother's Day in the US, and Newsweek's N'Gai Croal rightly estimates that many gamers owe a lot to their mothers. Because they indulged what they likely initially saw as a strange choice of hobby, we have a thriving gaming industry to enjoy today. The Level Up site offers an interview with a woman on the Newsweek staff who learned to tolerate those 'console things', and another piece where N'Gai interviews his own mom about his games-related past. "N'Gai: Growing up, you allowed us kids to have a computer, but we weren't allowed to have a videogame machine. What was your thinking behind that? Yvonne Croal: Well, in my estimation at that time, videogames were just another silly game. We certainly didn't want you to be spending 24/7 playing these games that we considered not productive in any way." If you're still looking for a gift for your own mom, Pop Cap is giving away a free copy of Bejeweled to anyone that signs up for their newsletter. Worked on my mom. Happy Mother's Day.
It's pretty sad that, like most American holidays, Mother's Day has been corrupted into a holiday that celebrates consumption and hollow platitudes rather than anything meaningful. One of the original premises of Mother's Day was a call to women worldwide to stand up against violence and war that had taken the lives of so many of their sons. It wasn't a tribute to mothers, but a rallying cry for mothers of the US to band together in a political cause to improve the world. The "mother" of Mother's Day became so disillusioned with the commercialization of the holiday that she actively campaigned against it.