Help! Trying to get my wife into gaming.

in gaming •  7 years ago 

So I'm new to the Steem community, but I need to ask for help early on. I am trying to get my wife into gaming (i'm sure if you're reading this then you don't need any convincing that this is a great idea).

I have gamed from the time I could hold a controller until today, and I don't have any plans to slow down anytime in the future. My son is just hitting the age where he is able to hold an NES controller and is starting to put together that he can control the player on the screen. It's a pretty cool thing to watch. My beautiful wife on the other hand, is less involved in the experience. Before I go any further, I want to explain that my wife has stated that she is fine with video games being a father-son thing in our family, but I would love it if there were some games she got excited about playing with me or our son. So I am here to ask for help!

Switch1.png
My son holding his wireless controller "helping" me play Odyssey.

Does anyone have any suggestions about good "entry level" games to get non-gamers into gaming?

To provide you all with some context, my wife is not completely new to video games. When she was a kid, her father bought an NES and her and her sister would play from time to time. Their favorite game was Anticipation, which is like pictionary mixed with trivial pursuit. My wife often spoke very fondly of these gaming sessions and claimed to be extremely good at the game. The first thing I did when I brought home my NES classic (after standing in line for 4 hours to wait for the GameStop to open) was to hack the thing and make sure I put anticipation on it. Watching her face light up when I called her into the room and she saw the start screen was awesome. As it turns out, my wife really is exceedingly good at the game, I didn't stand a chance!

Anticipation1.png
Anticipation2.png

She has also dabbled with the three NES Super Mario games, (not the Lost Levels...no way i'm going to kill her soul with that game) but nothing to seriously. I think what wound up happening is that as she got older, she just didn't stick with gaming (her dad never got another system and she never asked for one). By the time she met me in college, games had changed so much and I had been playing them so long, that she was put off by them, sees them as too complicated, and doesn't want to play against me. She was watching me play Odyssey just yesterday and asked how I knew to ground pound in a particular spot to find a seemingly random power moon. I told her that after playing Mario games for so long, I kind of understand what to look for and that there were a few butterflies fluttering around in that spot. She was impressed, but I think things like that make the situation worse.

Odyssey1.png

Now that I have access to almost every NES game and SNES game ever made, and have my N64, PS2, Xbone, PS4, Wii, and Switch, I am looking for recommendations about games that I can try out with her that I'm hoping she will enjoy playing. She doesn't like playing Mario Kart or Mario Party with me because the game becomes a bit one-sided and she hates it when I let up to make it competitive.

The best idea I can come up with after doing some digging around online is Snipperclips, which seems like a nice 2D co-op game that would get her invested in the game and the experience of playing with me. I have never played, so it would be an even field and I am hoping that she will wind up showing me a thing or two about the game. It would be great if she took a game to the point where she wanted to play by herself or with our son.

snipperclips.png

Any help you can offer me in terms of suggestions either old school or current games is greatly appreciated, and I am interested to see if any of you have had a similar experience. Feel free to tell me I'm nuts and should come to terms with the fact that my wife just isn't into gaming too haha. Thanks!

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

I was going to suggest Mario Party or Mario Kart, but I guess that's out of the window! My boyfriend still wants to play Little Big Planet with me, saying it would be a fun game to play together, but it's a Playstation game.

I used to love playing Mario Kart with my brother. Super Smash was fun too, but got less fun after he won lots of times. I also enjoyed Heroes of Might and Magic with him on the pc, but that's a whole different sort of game. How does she feel about Pokemon? Does she ever play any phone games? Maybe that could give you some good suggestions as to what she would like :D

Ah I totally didn't think of Little Big Planet. That's a great idea. I have a PS4 so that would work. I think if Snipperclips works out then that would be a great game to transition to afterwards. She missed the boat on the Pokemon trend, and I am not sure how to even broach the topic with her haha. That might be a down the road series for her if all goes well. She loves logic and reasoning puzzle games on the phone, like Sudoku and those types of games. Great ideas and thanks for the info!!

Congratulations @papayas, this post is the seventh most rewarded post (based on pending payouts) in the last 12 hours written by a Dust account holder (accounts that hold between 0 and 0.01 Mega Vests). The total number of posts by Dust account holders during this period was 5735 and the total pending payments to posts in this category was $1110.16. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, click here.

If you do not wish to receive these messages in future, please reply stop to this comment.