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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.
a chance to tag something "yourmom". I've been waiting since high school for this :P
Monstar L
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 :)
Of course, all those mothers out there who have just gotten into Wii games should get a copy of Cooking Mama. It's a kitchen sim of sorts, with lots of little tasks like cutting, peeling, stirring and serving food bits. Some of the recipes look pretty interesting.
Or maybe your mom should get YOU this game, to let you learn a bit more about how to feed yourself properly, and not make her do all the kitchen work!
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Forget indulging the choice of hobby, a lot of gamers owe their mom first for the 35 years of living in her basement!
The Farewell Tour II
After about 20 minutes of trying to teach my Mom to play Roger Clemen's MVP Baseball on my NES my brother and I gave up and she concluded that video games were annoying and unproductive, but ok. Thank God for that.
Haiku for you!
Lots of things flourished without the support of our mothers... like online porn.
And if you're one of the rare few whose mother encouraged your interest in porn, I really don't want to know.
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
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.
I have a mum you insensitive clod!
Maybe it's just me but I find the article to be little more than cock stroking among a peer group in effect.
"I said no to my kids playing games and now they're all well adjusted perfectly fine kids, this clearly shows that no games was what made my kids will adjusted" and then she says "It's a delight to see my kids sitting down and talking, the subject doesn't even matter". So if they all sat down and discussed Half life's plot is that some how being well adjusted and delightful, or is it suddenly evil as the topic is games?
Secondly, she points out how fantastic radio dramas are, yet the reasons she says they are good is the exact thing a good game of Nethack will give you. That little rat known as a Q is infact trying to rip your throat out, so maybe your character dodges, left, then right and finally thrusts his sword into the foul beast. Yet because the medium is different it is "clearly" some evil twisted non-imagination based thing.
Seems to me like this is just some mother going "oh my kids are great, I raised them so well!" when she has zero evidence of what happens if she had let them all watch porn all day and play games to their fill because there is only 1 chance to do it and you will never know the alternative's results.
I like muppets.
My mom was an avid gamer. She didn't pwn n00bs in Halo or anything, but she was a devoted Super Mario Bros. addict, from SMB1 through SMB Sunshine. Even before the NES, she loved Astrosmash and Burger Time for the Intellivision. And my dad thought those video games were for me and my brother...
I still miss those phone calls I used to get from her when she'd ask me how to get past a boss or particularly difficult part of the game.
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.
Get the PC registration codes, download the Mac trial, and then activate it with said codes.
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!