Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Do I Get My Spouse To Start Gaming With Me?
x_IamSpartacus_x writes "I've been a gamer for a long time (started on Nibbles in MS-DOS) and enjoy pretty much any good game. I can enjoy side-scrolling relics (original Prince of Persia, Win 95), to modern MMORPGs (stopped playing my 85 lvl Mage on WoW just recently, read on to see why), to a good sports game (Madden series are a blast) and many more. I've been married for 4 years now and have hardly touched my games since being married and starting having kids. My wife and I are Americans but live overseas and have little access to new movies/entertainment and, from experience, I know that a good game can provide much more entertainment than a good movie. My question is, what are good ways/good games that I can use to get my wife into computer gaming? We both have good laptops that I'd love to get her interested in using to do co-op or combative games with me. Because of my long experience, gaming comes naturally to me and so even on a game I haven't played I would probably be much better than she. Is there a game or idea that would take away the embarrassing factor for her of being much worse than I am while still being enjoyable and worth spending a lot of time on with me? Do any other Slashdotters struggle getting their spouse to game with them?"
Adults game, and there's not a damn thing wrong with it unless you allow it to become one
Sure, but all the (male) adults I know who game fit into one of these categories -
- Single, or in a relationship but have no kids (ergo, have time for gaming)
- In a relationship with kids, but have an extensive child support network (grandparents etc.)
- In a relationship, with kids, but have a 'traditional' marriage where the burden of child rearing almost entirely falls on the woman - The husband is in the basement playing WoW while the wife is handling bath time, putting on pajamas, reading stories, brushing teeth then cleaning the kitchen.
- In a relationship, with kids, but the kids are largely grown up
No male I know that has younger kids and an 'equal' marriage has time for video games.
This may just be me, or a fluke, or whatever, but I'll share my experience: Heroes of Might and Magic. I don't know what it is with that game, but over the years I've had a string of girlfriends -- and now my wife -- who generally have/had no interest in videogames. But that one has, somehow, hooked them all. The setup has varied a little over the years. There was a time when my then-other and I each had our own computers in my home office, and we'd play networked, and surf, read, goof off, or whatever when it wasn't our turn. Currently, I have a PC behind the flat screen in the den. My wife and I pull up a couple of chairs a little closer to the TV than we use for normal viewing, and play hotseat with a BT keyboard and mouse (mostly mouse, you don't really need the keyboard that much, except to hold down shift to split troops). She embroiders on her off turn. Clearly the turn-based nature of it is key, but I've tried to go on to other turn-based games (Civ, etc), and none of them hook like that one does. There's something about it.
So anyway, the tl;dr version: HOMM (personally a fan of V, although III is of course the classic).