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?"
You don't.
Either she'll game differently/better than you and you'll regret it.
Or all your time becomes gaming time when your together and you don't end up enjoying it.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
This is a decision you will soon regret. Go out and immerse yourself in the local culture, take the wife and kids. It's an experience you'll never have again, take advantage of that rather than cooped up at home.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
Why not do something active?
Why not get out and explore the country that you are in with your wife and kids?
---
Segmentation Fault ( core dumped )
Get friends together so she's not the only inexperienced person, and so she can take a break when she wants. Do stuff like Rock Band that is cooperative and easily adjusted for new players.
The cluelessness of the nerd knows no bounds.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I think its as simple as playing a game that is very *fun* and then playing another game that is very *fun* and there you have it. Start with Portal 2 (great co-op for any skill level) and then continue looking for good Co-Op games.
Dude, I've been married for over thirty years and have never been able to get my wife into gaming... unless it was "Bubbles" on her iPhone or a simple solitary type game. She just has no desire to play and/or sees it as too much work. It is not fun for her at all; needless to say I am the exact opposite.
Not only is Portal a great game, but I have lots of non-gamer friends who enjoyed it, plus there is a sequel with co-op. It's also extremely good at training people to play the game, and teaching it's core mechanics. New gamers often find starting off hard as most games presume so much knowledge of general gaming. Portal lowers that barrier to entry significantly.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Portal 2 has a nice co-op mode (video), you solve the puzzles together. It could be fun.
Speaking as a gamer who got married and had kids, as well as somebody who lived overseas: Spend the time meeting your wife and kids in activities that THEY like,and explore the huge world around you IRL. The gaming will wait a few years, your wife won't feel abandoned in a foreign land, and when the kids get older, they'll love gaming with you (can be your "thing" with them). I have a gaming rig that I haven't even turned on in 2 months.. Sad, but time with the family is priority one for me, and I'll be honest in saying that there were many times I had to CHOOSE to make it that way, as my selfish feelings told me to sit in the basement many times. If your wife IS interested, I agree with above that Portal would be a good start, in coop mode.
Same situation here. I'm a hardcore gamer, she is not. In PC terms I have had success with Orcs Must Die 2 and Portal 2. I also tried Magicka but that didn't seem to be her to tastes. All are available on Steam. Portal 2's level editor provides a lot of replayability and we're currently working our way through Nightmare difficulty on Orcs Must Die 2. I got her to try these when we started doing "His/Hers nights" where each of us has 1 weeknight to totally dictate what activities we do that night (with the intent that whatever we do will be together). OMD2 has been so successful we've played it on a few of her nights or nights that or not either of ours.
On the Wii the Lego series of games has been a huge hit, especially since she's a Harry Potter fan. Replayability is limited after you 100% each of them (number of hours varies, typically 20-40).
All of these games are specifically 2 player coop.
Divorce her and marry a gamer.
Some girls don't like games but here are some to try that the female population seems to be more receptive to in my experience:
Party Games: Guitar Hero, Mario Party, Wii Party, Scene It, Monopoly Streets
Multiplayer Platformers: Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Country, Little Big Planet
Puzzle Games: Bejeweled, Peggle, Hidden Object Games like Mystery Case Files
Adventure Games: Back to the Future (big hit with my fiancee, we played through the whole thing)
For the more girly girls, you might need to go with something with the "cute" factor. Little Big Planet is especially good at this one. You can put stickers on stuff and dress your sack boy/girl. It's also multiplayer. Co-op is usually a plus.
We'll make great pets
I hate to break it to you but she grew up and you didn't.
I hate to break it to you, but it's not elementary kids feeding the gaming industry to the tune of a billion dollars a year. Adults game, and there's not a damn thing wrong with it unless you allow it to become one.
Hell, I'd rather find a fellow adult co-worker who games to blow off steam than wonder when that quiet shy guy in the corner cube is gonna suddenly snap one day and murder the entire office because he can't seem to find an outlet to deal with adult stress.
Gaming does have its benefits for all ages. True, it also has its downsides, especially for those who become addicted. But when is that not true for anything in life.
You make time for gaming, and for doing stuff both of you like.
I don't know what he/she likes that you don't, but what would it take for you to take THAT up ? Nothing doing, right ? same here...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Let me explain a little bit more...
You know those hours that you spend alone, immersed in a game while you own n00bs in BF3 or while you wage some pathetic WoW or LoL quest? What is your wife doing while this is going on? Is she cleaning, making dinner, keeping the kids occupied or watching a movie, leaving you uninterrupted for your fun?
Now, imagine she's gaming, spending hours immersed in a WoW or LoL quest, or worse still some ridiculous hours long farming stint. Imagine she's as addicted to that crap as you are. Who's cleaning, making dinner, watching the kids? I can tell you who won't be playing games for long stretches. I can tell you who won't be enjoying the fact that their spouse is gaming. You won't.
The proper course of action is for you to spend a little less time gaming and a little more time doing group activities with your family. Then you can enjoy your uninterrupted game time.
Regret, thy name is x_IamSpartacus_x
I'm not sure I'd be trying to push her into gaming unless she's actually interested in doing so. Surely it'd be better to just find a hobby / activity that you both have a common interest in?
But that aside, I found Left for Dead was a great co-op game that could be enjoyed by people with different skill sets. My girlfriend is a much better FPS gamer than me and she had to save my arse frequently in that game but we still both had a lot of fun.
I've been gaming with my husband fairly regularly since we got married nearly 20 years ago (although our gaming did drop off dramatically when our oldest was born until our youngest child was 5--little ones require lots of time!). As far as I can tell, his strategy was to figure out what type of game *I* responded to best, and then play those with me. Sometimes he'd play them solo first to get through the learning curve and be able to coach me when I needed it (though he was also kind enough NOT to coach me when I wanted to figure things out solo). I realize I slowed him way, way down, but it was "together" time that we both enjoyed, and he played his own games separately as well (a much wider range of games, and at much higher difficulty levels).
Initially I preferred those silly fantasy quest / adventure games where you figure out puzzles (Kings Quest and the like--really juvenile, but I liked it, and it was ultimately my gateway into other games). He'd hang out while I played, offering me advice when I asked for it, and generally just being supportive and interested (like a parent at a young child's soccer game - hah). Later we played strategy games like MOO 1 and XCOM 1 (I did say this was 20 years ago!), and he'd help me through the learning curve until I was addicted as well. Somewhere along the way we stumbled onto Daggerfall/Oblivion/Skyrim, so we played those as well. Sims is another fantastic game line for pulling someone into gaming--I have a few friends who've said they never understood my enjoyment of games until they played that. On rare occasions we'd play a collaborative multiplayer game in which he'd be way, WAY further ahead than I was, and sometimes I didn't mind, but other times it was annoying. So most of the time I play the game and he coaches/hangs out with me... and then when I'm done he plays his own game. That's probably not the ideal you're aiming for, but the bottom line is that if you're wanting to help her learn to like gaming, you have to find something she likes to serve as her initial "hook" and then be fully supportive as she does make her way up the learning curve.
So that's what worked for us. It might work for you. Something else might work for you. Or you might decide to have a different interest in common with her, and let gaming just be your thing (especially when your little ones are young! most moms I know would refuse to waste even 90 minutes watching a movie they didn't like in those first couple of years, where 90 minutes of downtime is absurdly luxurious and not something one can waste... so if that's the case, give her 3 years and then try again).
My SO is a gamer, but a different sort from me. She likes Xbox games, mostly shooters and RPG titles. The only PC game she'll play is The Sims 2. I primarily play role playing and real time strategy games.
We found our crossover points in a couple different ways:
1. We compete on silly casual games on our phones and tablets. Superiority in Bubble Shooter or figuring out a new way to make pictures of dicks relevant in Draw Something is treasured gaming experience.
2. The PC gaming experience for games like Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Dragon Age is better, so we kind of play and make decisions together. I'm more of an explorer and she's more of an action junkie, but in practice this means that if one of us can't do something with our normal approach, it's time for the other to take a crack at it.
3. Sometimes I suck it up and let her kick my ass in some kind of console shooter or Kinect title. I'll also sit out with her and read while she leans on me and plays Borderlands or something. It's kind of passive/introvert together time.
4. We experimented with MMO-playing, but the MMO I actually like closed and she's not into WoW any more, so the motivation for that just evaporated. That actually worked pretty well.
Mostly, though, we play different games and it's FINE. I do my thing and she does hers.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
You have a post about what you like, but what does she like? Does she play video games? Does she play any non video games, like board games, sports? Is she competitive?
It's not like video games are new, if she hasn't gotten into video games by now, she's probably not interested.
I suggest you find something she likes, if she's into dancing, maybe a dancing game, or if she likes to rock out without real instruments, a guitar hero like game.
Another question, do you do things she likes? Do you try to do the activities she's into?
Be seeing you...
Does it have to be computer games? Especially "real gaming" which is usually defined as boring WWII FPS sequels?
You're overseas? Invite friends over to place some kind of euro board/physical game. Yes yes agricola takes 45 minutes to set up all the counters but there's plenty of lighter fare. Settlers of catan? Carcassonee? How about Dominion (a euro-card game)? Or strip-Dominion? Pretty much anything in the Rio Grande catalog?
How about paper and pencil RPG? Yeah if you're overseas in Saudi Arabia they might get nervous about "magic" or whatever fictional religious aspects, but if you're in a civilized part of the world it should be no problem. Pathfinder or classic DnD?
Plain ole card games? You're overseas so invite several locals over for poker night. Better yet if it works out rotate to each players house.
There's a certain theme to the above... yes you can play all of the above "on a computer" but it works just as well in person and that's probably the way to pivot into "computer" gaming if you're the type where the UI matters more than the gameplay or if its occasionally just more convenient to play on a tablet while traveling or whatever. Example: if she likes playing euro-resource-type-games in person using cardboard like "powerline" or WTF its called, its a pretty short jump to Civilization / Simcity.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Consider:
If your spouse enjoyed gaming, your spouse would already be playing games.
If you convince/cajole/annoy your spouse into playing games, your spouse will, more than likely, do it just to please you and/or to shut you up on the topic.
*You* think games are more interesting than movies. Others may not. (I watch few movies and think games are mind-numbingly boring.)
If your spouse is bored and you are looking to help with that, good for you. But, expand your search.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Maybe you haven't run into this one yet, but the advice I'll give you (based on nearly 20 years of happy marriage) is the same I give to newlyweds:
(1) Housekeepers are significantly cheaper and more effective in promoting marital harmony than marriage counselors, and far cheaper than divorce lawyers. That's where your first discretionary dollars should go.
(2) New activities are most interesting with friends. That is, if you want her to enjoy getting into skiing, gaming, whatever, with you, then find a couple also interested in getting into it, and make it a group thing.
It's of course a bit different. It uses different hardware. It has similarities to your game:
- you can advance through several levels
- you can use your fingers for control
- you can customize her outfit
- you can collect and use tools
- you can play it on the couch
- there's a boss level at the end (you most likely won't get near it, nor will beat it, just use some tools for now)
But there are differences, too:
- it's more exciting
- you can use more than your fingers
- you get more physical feedback than rumble
- you are not restricted to your couch
- you might achieve more satisfaction
Just try it. You'll probably realize that she's not playing your game because her game is a lot better.
Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And after it's grown,
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.
from experience, I know that a good game can provide much more entertainment than a good movie.
Does your spouse have the same opinion about gaming as you? maybe she views gaming as little more than a time wasting experience.
Because of my long experience, gaming comes naturally to me
Maybe your spouse sees that, and she prefers not to become addicted to gaming as you appear to be.
.
Perhaps the question that is really being asked here is, "my wife is giving me grief for sitting in front of the game console all day, and I want her to stop bothering me and let me play."
The manner in which you pose your questions is that of a selfish person. Instead of trying to impose your likes upon her, you should be talking with her about new things both of you can enjoy, perhaps even taking advantage of living in a different country.
With so much to discover and learn just outside your door, why waste your time sitting in front of a game console?
Talk to your wife. Explain that it's important to you. Maybe she'll give it a try. But you can't convince her if it's not her thing.
My wife tried co-op games (lego star wars, etc) with me but really wasn't into it. But she respects that it's important to me and lets me have time to play, even if it's not with her.
The stupidest thing you can do is ask a bunch of nerds for advice and then try to convince her she should be into it. Talk to her instead.
"When i said go fuck yourself i didnt mean it literally" - Arnold Schwartzenneger in The 6th Day
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.
I met my wife playing Everquest... We got married a couple years later & are about to celebrate our 10th anniversary this summer. Some people just don't find some things entertaining (think cliche geeks & sports), so sometimes you have to just luck into it at the start. A word of warning though... When getting her to play CounterStrike at a LAN party, be careful. No matter how much you & the other guys are trash talking each other, the same rules don't apply to her. For example when she brings a knife to a gun fight & shanks you with it, responding with "You f*&#ing b*%@h!!!" is bad. She will never play CounterStrike again & you will still be hearing about it many years later.
Gaming is a special category for several reasons. Far more people enjoy listening to music or watching movies than playing video games, or at least video games deeper than free SWF games on Newgrounds/Kongregate and 99 cent iPhone/iPad games. This means far more people are likely to buy the equipment than for playing such games. People may have bought a TV for sports, news, or political talk shows, and the leap from watching those to watching scripted series and movies is small. I can't think of any counterpart in gaming to a TV channel's "lead-out" after a television event anticipated to have extremely high ratings. Furthermore, it takes a lot more esoteric knowledge to create even the simplest video game than to create simple music or to shoot and edit a short film, so there isn't as much chance that one will discover gaming as a medium through appreciating (or at least pretending to appreciate) the "refrigerator quality" work that a family member has created.
Yes I'm a wife of a /. Geek... I'll prove it.. Ponies YAY!! Unicorns YAY!!! I 3 lolcats :-D ok so what I'm about to tell you will save your marriage so listen up! I have always dated geeks and tried to get into the gaming thing with them. At a young age I was scarred playing original Mario bros at a friends house. Stupid chompin flower! The theme song still haunts me. My next foray into the gaming world with my first BF was somekind of first person shooter game where I got stuck in a corner and shot anything that moved. My team mates quickly killed me. So video games to me were frustrating and depressing cuz I would die within the first 5 mins. The miracle game which changed my outlook on video games... Legos Star Wars!!! Me and hubby can play for hours and I have a great time. Mostly I collect coins while he fights the bad guys and if I do have to fight I can randomly punch buttons and mostly make it out alive. Also I can die and immediately get resurrected! And I make cute noises when I die so it's kinda fun jumping off cliffs :-D the cantina is a great place to practice blowing up stuff and getting coins without anyone shooting at me. When we get to a really hard part and I die a lot it's easy to back out of the game and let the computer take my player till the first player gets through and then I can join back in. All the Legos games are a blast but I think Star Wars the original is easiest. I would say start your wife on this game and just tell her you wanna play for a half hour (same as a sitcom) I'm pretty sure she will want to keep playing after that. :)
(Guest post by CODiNEs wife *I* am not a girl)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Reverse the role and get into what SHE likes to do. Just imagine that SHE posted a similar question on some forum. And have you even asked her?
Yes, a good game is more entertaining then a good movie. But a good meal is even better.
If you want to trick your spouse into games and she does not like computer games, start with non-computer games as a stepping stone game. Scrabble or chess.
But first start talking to her and let her never know that YOU rather asked the question to complete strangers then talking to you. If she finds out, start thinking of visiting rights to your kids, because she might be wanting to leave you.
Talk to her. Or perhaps even more important: listen to her. She will tell you.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Star Wars the Old Republic has gone free to play recently and the IP is an easy sell. A lot of women where interested in the game before and during the game launch. Star Wars has an appeal because it is familiar. The game is good and the story is excellent and the dialog wheels in the quests work well in a group. You can duo it together if you have the hardware. I would also suggest Magic the Gathering as another option. The Magic the gathering 2013 on steam has an excellent tutorial and you could quickly get up to speed and playing hands against each other.
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
The submitter might as well be David Beckham asking how he can get Victoria Beckham to play soccer with him.
Look, the fact of the matter is, you've been playing video games most of your life, so there's few things that are true for you that are never going to be true for your wife:
1) You started when you were very young. Very young is when most people pick up new interests, and one of the things that makes that interest interesting in their adult lives is that it was part of their young lives. No matter what you do, video games are never going to be a part of your wife's young life.
2) You have tens of thousands of hours of experience. That means even when you encounter entirely new games, you get to apply that experience to the new game. Your wife will have no frame of reference. For example, let's say you tried to introduce her to WoW.... you know what a character level is. She has no idea. You probably played RPGs at some time in the early 90's (or a bit earlier or later depending on your age), she's done it... never.
3) When you're playing with her and your skill level is going to be much higher than hers is. EVEN if you're playing cooperatively, that's going to be frustrating. We're talking basic skills here, like even manipulating a controller, or precise mouse use. Doing activities with someone who is at an entirely different skill level than you - even the simple version of that activity - is rarely pleasureably.
4) Because of 3) your wife is going to have a bit of a learning curve before she can really enjoy a game. That might be OK, *IF* your wife wasn't married with kids. And I imagine at least one of you has a job. By the time she spends an hour or two working on that learning curve, it's going to be time to put the kids to bed or go to bed yourselves and she's just going to think the activity stinks if she never gets past the learning part to the fun part.
And, the laptop is the LAST place you should attempt this. There is nothing that requires a laptop to play that you should try and get a novice gamer interested in. If you can't play it on a phone, it's almost certainly too advanced.
The reality of this is, if you dated this girl before you got married (and I hope you did), and she didn't pick up an interest in video games during that exposure to you, it's not going to happen now.
Maybe you two can play words with friends together.
paintball
Turn based hgames are the key.
Was that a typo, or did you actually mean H games?
When I say this article, I turned to my wife and said "Hey, someone posted an Ask Slashdot asking 'How do I get my spouse to start gaming with me?'"
And, she just busted out laughing, saying that was the most ridiculous question she'd ever heard. The answer is, of course, "you don't."
If she's not a gamer, she's not a gamer. Don't try to change her.
Tripod - Gonna Make You Happy
You want to get her interested in gaming with you. Let's look at the root cause:
1) She begs, nags, harasses, pleads with you to get away from the computer, do something together, "spend more time with me", etc. You feel that getting her into gaming will bridge this gap, and let you continue on playing games together.
2) You watched some shitty movies, and have concluded that no movies in the history of cinema are worth watching. Or she only wants to watch chick-flicks. Or you can't agree on movies, so she watches The Notebook (again) and resents it the whole time, because you're busy playing a game.
3) She feels that she doesn't know you enough, wants to "meet you halfway", and has shown interest in playing something you play, rather than her typical Facebook games.
4) You want something for the both of you to do once your child(ren) is/are asleep, and the thought of reclaiming your juvenile adolescence by trouncing some n00b really butters your biscuit. It'd be great if you were a husband/wife team!
There's really only one thing to be said for all of these: you're doing it wrong.
You're in a new country. It has a history, a culture, a language. Go out and see and learn them, together. As a family.
You have a new family. It has a future, traditions, and time to be spent together. Don't waste it; spend it together. As a family.
You're wasting precious moments with people who don't give two shits about you, and avoiding precious moments with people who love you more than their own breath.
You're the man of the house. Act like it.
Maybe you two can play words with friends together.
Did you know they even have a version you can play in real life now? Games are finally growing out of cell phones and into the third dimension! It's a really exciting time to be a gamer, with these new and innovative products.
More seriously, try board games! My wife isn't much of a video gamer, but board games were a huge hit with her. Look at things like Agricola, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, and Settlers of Catan. They reward analytical thinking like video games do, so you won't be bored, I promise.