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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.
I am particularly grateful for my Mom. Instead of seeing it as an odd hobby, she saw nothing wrong with it. She could even appriciate some of the effort that went into making them. Probably because she is an art teacher. I remember hearing one of my friends mothers say, "Games are wonderful because I always have something to get him for Christmas/Birthday." Don't forget to send your mother a little something on Sunday. =)
My mom actually introduced me to video games. She was a hardcore Atari 2600 player back in her time (which she still has stuffed away in her closet with a hojillion games). When little ol' me came along, mom and I spent many-a happy afternoon playing Super Mario Bros. on the NES.
Sadly, she stopped playing some time after that. I think tomorrow I will break out Wii Sports and see if I can't get her back into it... failing that, I'll boot up Super Mario Bros. on Virtual Console and share some memories :)
My mom bought us a TRS 80 (remember those?) back in the day, that was a key start into my life in computing. She was too cheap to buy a PC when I got one in '82, so she had her brother in law, who worked for IBM, get her a discounted IBM desktop machine of some sort, whose name I can't recall. It had a tiny little 8 inch CRT, 16k of RAM, a tape drive as the only storage, and APL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_lang uage)/ as an embedded language in it. It didn't do anything, and she wanted a word processor, so, she wrote one. In APL. It was pretty close the first program she ever wrote in her life. It didn't do much, opened a file, allowed you to type into it, position a cursor, etc, but I was impressed, and still am. She inspired me to try things I didn't know how to do or even try, which has been good for me.
Happy Mothers day, Mom.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I grew up with a brother in a wheelchair. When the Atari 2600 came out, I begged for one for my birthday and managed to convince my mom to get it. My bro and I played it a lot and she realized it was something he and I (and her sometimes) could do together and his being in a wheelchair wasn't an issue. Then he got an Intellivision. Man! We'd kick ass all day and night playing baseball (20-inning tied games, nobody else could touch us) and racing (we found all the little tracks between the real ones, houses, etc).
Now that the games are better, mom is more into them: Oblivian and the like. When we used to do a lot of RPG'ing, she was even a dedicated and talented GM! Beat that!!
You GO mom! Happy Mom's day!