Briefly I thought about titling this article “Making your Girlfriend Fall in Love with Master Chief,” but then I had a flash back to the gay black man at EB Games that I chatted up. He complained his significant other hated all games except Viva Pinata. When I started thinking about it, most the girls I hang around enjoy gaming. And I know just as many guy friends that don’t play games. So this once sexist article has now become a general “how-to” guide on converting.
Why am I qualified to write this article? I think the triumph of getting my wife to play games for six hour blocks, screaming joyfully as she kills another zombie, and creating deep dark rings under her eyes from lack of sleep and blinking speaks of my success.
I’ve been trying to get girlfriends to play games for years, but never had a long term permanent project like a wife to work on. I never took the project seriously because relationships are fragile, day to day occurrences. Then that ring forged of un-decaying metal was slipped onto my finger and I realized that to make this a great marriage we needed to have videogames in common.
You have to approach this sort of project as you would an RPG. You don’t start a serious RPG by attacking the final castle. (Unless you’re that awesome guy who put up the YouTube video of how to beat Elder Scrolls 3 in 15 minutes. I want to be you someday.) You have to build up your skills. You have scroll through endless amounts of text and dialogue, fighting over-sized sewer rats and skeletons with rusted swords for hours before you take on the king.
The first option that I tried and somewhat failed at (Only because we were drunk and she didn’t understand what it meant to defend the moon base) assumes that the person in question hasn’t played a game since the Super Nintendo. They have an intense fear of “3D” environments. These are the rusted sword wielding skeletons. Remember the first time you played a “3D” game or had to use mouse-look because there were more plains than just left or right eyelevel. Go back to these classics.
Xbox Live Arcade offers these classics for a consol if you don’t have the floppy disks hanging around anymore. Start the non-gamer off with something like Doom, where mouse-look doesn’t apply. If they laugh at how easy that is, move them into Quake 2 or Duke Nukem 3d, a sort of mouse-look pseudo 3d environment. Let them get comfortable with a game before you move them into something like Halo or Call of Duty where every button on the controller or keyboard has a function.
The sewer rats in the gaming world are those games that Neil would immediately call “baby-games.” The Wii and DS are filled with the baby-game fodder needed to get someone to love games. Sometimes non-gamers complain that videogames make you stupid or lazy. Have them play something like Wii Sports or Planet Puzzle League. Show the non-gamer that games are not just constant shoot-em ups. Once they’re ready for the big leagues maybe introduce them to Tiger Woods Golf or Puzzle Quest where they can find a more in-depth gaming experience.
Notes for Level1-10 gamers:
-Don’t have the non-gamer play something with shotty controls immediately. They don’t have a love for games so they will be unwilling to deal with Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, or Resident Evil. These are all games they should experience later.
Have patience. Constantly grabbing the controller from a non-gamer saying “let me do this part” is not going to grow their love. When a tree isn’t growing quick enough, you don’t snatch its roots and spread them.
…to be continued
-Dan
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