Gaming with spouses/significant others.

[The Mad Hatter]

I’m a little in awe of you people with gaming spouses/significant others. My experience with girlfriends over the years has ranged from amused tolerance to contempt, but never anything close to a shared experience. My current girlfriend is the one in the “contempt” category – she had disdain for it before she met me and the years of watching me raid in WoW did not help the cause. It’s levelled off since I stopped playing that game very much, but it’s still very much an alien concept to her and her entire family. Men don’t play video games, they fix things and watch Hockey. It’s hard for me to even imagine sharing a game like Dark Souls or the like with my partner. I can’t be the only one in this situation....

[Union Carbide]

So get a hockey game. Seriously.

[RepoMan]

I do some minimal co-op gaming with my wife on occasion -- she actually had a fair bit of fun playing the Scott Pilgrim beat-'em-up XBLA game with me. But even that has mostly fallen by the wayside. We've done some board gaming as well (Castle Ravenloft, brrrr).

Once upon a time we both played WoW for about a month before becoming (mutually) bored, and quitting.

She has no 3D navigation skills, so FPS games, Skyrim, etc. are right out for her. She is a Bejeweled ninja, however, and plays it compulsively on her phone :-)

In our house, men play video games all the time. We also play Fancy Pants Adventures on XBLA with our kids (GREAT platformer for little ones!).

[ElGuapo]

"When I became a man, I put away childish things..." ... and all that.

Man, I was just going to post something like this. She has no problem with me playing games, she even buys me games . . . but she sees them as silly, childish, and crass . . . which they usually are. Saint's Row may be a hoot to play, but it makes you look like a socially retarded 12 year old when you play it.

The key is finding a game she likes. Most girls who have never gamed are exactly like most guys that have never gamed. They get frustrated with complex controls, spinning cameras, tons of UI, and the like. I've found it's better to go with simple games with simple controls, like most Wii sports games, racing games, etc.

[Shellfishguy]

My wife was a gamer when she was young and it stuck thankfully. We both had C64s which gave us a lot to talk about when we first met. We still game together, WoW, City of Heroes, Civ etc and the occasional board game. But under to circumstances are we allowed to play Uno together. Its not pretty.

[Dave Markell]

My second wife's a die-hard gamer, and after a disastrous first marriage in which my love of gaming and my ex's hatred for it was part of the problem, I wouldn't have it any other way. I mean that literally, too--when I started dating again, women who were anti-gaming were immediately dumped. If something's a major part of your makeup, your spouse needs to be at minimum neutral towards it. I treated gaming no differently from other major issues like religion, finance, desire for children, and so on.

[BleedTheFreak]

My wife was also a bit of a gamer (NES and SNES, stuff like Zelda and Tetris) and she has her own DS and plays lots of games on it like Professor Layton.

But as for gaming together, we just usually settle for outdoing each other's Bejeweled Blitz high scores, or playing some Words with Friends on Facebook. Occasionally her and I (and the kids) will all jump into a Mario Party or something, too.

[Martinez]

I play DDO with my wife. She actually is higher level than me with 2 characters. We used to play Ashen Empires for years, but god did I hate that game. She actually likes gaming. Right now she's hooked on Plants vs. Zombies, which is fine by me, because I'm left alone to play Skyrim.

It does make me feel guilty because when ever I play a CRPG, she asks if it has co-op. I play mostly single-player crpg or straight-up fps shooters.

[nijimeijer]

Heh; I certainly have it easy (except for on the wallet).

When Deus Ex came out ... 2 copies needed for the house. Same for Skyrim, same for Dragon Age II, etc. That's on PC. In the console space, we'll usually trade off, as we have two 360s, so one of us games in the basement, the other in the living room. Of course, we actively look for co-op games, too. RE5, DR2, Gears games, Halo games ... All have brought us a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, she won't let me play SR3 with her, because she said I'd just lead her through the game by her nose, which is likely true because I'm a jerk.

[ElGuapo]

It's also unfortunate that at the end of the current console generation's cycle, they seem to be dropping split screen/co-op gaming from a lot of titles, especially the AAA ones. I suppose this has to do with graphics and processing them on a split screen, but it's really annoying, as it makes me a loner gamer, even when I want to play with her.

[nijimeijer]

I agree; we love to split screen on the console, and prefer it when it's available as an option. While we don't mind upstairs\downstairs play (after all, we just leave the door open and yell, or use the headsets), we prefer to sit together when we're killing things.

[Scuzz]

My wife has no desire to play any of the games that I like....thank god.

[Scuzz]

It's also unfortunate that at the end of the current console generation's cycle, they seem to be dropping split screen/co-op gaming from a lot of titles, especially the AAA ones. I suppose this has to do with graphics and processing them on a split screen, but it's really annoying, as it makes me a loner gamer, even when I want to play with her.

Your gonna have to make up your mind then, are you gonna play the game or play with her. ;)

[Universal Leader]

Except for SingStar, my wife doesn't play games. She wasn't raised with games and only began using a computer a few years ago. It's interesting to observe how incredibly difficult games are for people who lack the ability to connect hand movement to onscreen movement.

[Gigglemoo]

I've mostly dated gamer chicks. The grass isn't always greener.

The girl I had my first serious relationship ended up turning into a MMO addict. She moved towns, then all she did was work & play for pretty much an entire year. No friends. This wasn't even one of those games where it's about raiding and meeting people - just a gambling sim/lootwhore where you're always seeing numbers go up, Asheron's Call. At first we played it together. I quit. She didn't take that too well, every conversation turned into fights, etc.

So far that hasn't happened with another gamer girl, but dating one always reminds me how it could turn out. It's not as fun as someone who develops/plays indy stuff. Most of them thought games were shit because they weren't 3d or on facebook.

I really enjoy the ones who like to compete in multiplayer though :)

[Imryll]

We play many of the same games--simultaneously, but not together. We experimented with games like Might & Magic, but I really disliked competing competing with Shim. Questing together in WoW worked a bit better, but still felt awkward. It's just more fun for us to share what's happening in our individual games than to play against each other or try to coordinate our gameplay.

[Quaro]

Do you like board games? It's a great way to draw people in. It's inherently social and you can smoothly transition into party games on the television, and beyond. Also boardgames rule.

I recommend Wits and Wagers as a starter.

[Valentine]

My girlfriend views it as just another activity to do together, even if that means we just sit in the same room while one of us plays. It helps that I'm quick on the pause button if she suddenly decides to start talking.
It helps that she plays D&D and likes video games herself, though she's bad at them and I usually have to help her through the hard parts.
The key is to never let them feel ignored, pause the game when they're talking and never say "not now, I'm playing", just a quick "One sec hon, I'm at a good part" is better which is why I like save anywhere games or those with lots of checkpoints.
Together we play silly, non-competitive games like Lego Indiana Jones

[Slainte Mhath]

Word of warning to the unmarried folks here : I married a non-gaming spouse and it's been a constant source of conflict in the 17 years we've been married. She views video games as silly and childish, and does not attempt to hide her scorn for them. It has been a constant source of hard feelings on both sides the entire time we've been together. Granted, years ago, before we had kids, I had a wicked Everquest addiction for several months that caused a lot of conflict and in retrospect was totally my fault (which I've owned up to). That was nearly 15 years ago though, and in the last 12 years since we had kids my gaming has been limited to mostly late nights after everyone else has gone to bed and my "social obligations" to my family have been fulfilled. Despite this, I still get unending grief over my hobby, as if somehow I will just one day "grow up" and realize how ridiculous it looks for a grown man to be killing orcs and dragons on a computer screen. The resentment that attitude causes in the gaming spouse is real and palpable, and has a negative effect on the marriage.

I would highly recommend that people who enjoy video games marry other people who at least think they are fun. You shouldn't have to restrict your dating to nothing but hardcore gamers or anything, but at least find someone who enjoys playing board games, card games and the occasional Mario Kart or similar game, otherwise the gulf between you on this subject could be a real issue in your relationship. There may be a change in the wind in my house though, as after 17 years of never giving me anything computer or gaming related as a gift, I got Skyrim from my wife this Christmas. I suspect it was as much to distract me from the fact that she bought the "family" an iPad for Christmas as anything else, but at least it's a small start.

And yeah, I've tried playing games with my wife, and so have my kids. We've tried everything from simple Wii sports games to Bejeweled, she simply sucks at them which only serves to piss her off even more. What someone said up thread is totally true, it's very hard for someone who did not grow up playing games and is 40+ with no gaming experience to suddenly "get" video games.

[AlanQ]

Word of warning to the unmarried folks here : I married a non-gaming spouse and it's been a constant source of conflict in the 17 years we've been married. She views video games as silly and childish, and does not attempt to hide her scorn for them. It has been a constant source of hard feelings on both sides the entire time we've been together. Granted, years ago, before we had kids, I had a wicked Everquest addiction for several months that caused a lot of conflict and in retrospect was totally my fault (which I've owned up to). That was nearly 15 years ago though, and in the last 12 years since we had kids my gaming has been limited to mostly late nights after everyone else has gone to bed and my "social obligations" to my family have been fulfilled. Despite this, I still get unending grief over my hobby, as if somehow I will just one day "grow up" and realize how ridiculous it looks for a grown man to be killing orcs and dragons on a computer screen. The resentment that attitude causes in the gaming spouse is real and palpable, and has a negative effect on the marriage.

I would highly recommend that people who enjoy video games marry other people who at least think they are fun. You shouldn't have to restrict your dating to nothing but hardcore gamers or anything, but at least find someone who enjoys playing board games, card games and the occasional Mario Kart or similar game, otherwise the gulf between you on this subject could be a real issue in your relationship. There may be a change in the wind in my house though, as after 17 years of never giving me anything computer or gaming related as a gift, I got Skyrim from my wife this Christmas. I suspect it was as much to distract me from the fact that she bought the "family" an iPad for Christmas as anything else, but at least it's a small start.

And yeah, I've tried playing games with my wife, and so have my kids. We've tried everything from simple Wii sports games to Bejeweled, she simply sucks at them which only serves to piss her off even more. What someone said up thread is totally true, it's very hard for someone who did not grow up playing games and is 40+ with no gaming experience to suddenly "get" video games.

Or my solution: find someone with a different but equally time-consuming and silly hobby. For example, my wife likes to quilt. I pretend to understand her hobby, and she pretends to understand mine. I occasionally even manage to rope her into to something quite casual, like Pixel Junk monsters. So I don't think it's necessary to find a "gaming spouse" per se, but rather to find someone who understands the idea of having a (basically solitary) hobby.

[Jag]

I spent last night gaming while my wife watched football alone in another room.

Edit: Just read SM's post. That's pretty much my exact situation. But the hostility towards gaming ended a few years ago and has settled into grudging acceptance. It helped that I stopped raiding as well.

[Relayer71]

My wife is NOT a gamer, the only thing she'll ever play is Ms. Pacman and I wish she'd show more interest in my hobby. But, I actually think I'm lucky in that she doesn't look down on it either. She actually likes that I have some hobbies that keep me out of her hair.

See, I absolutely HATE shopping and was making her life miserable early in our relationship by forcing myself on these shopping trips with her and bitching every chance I got. We came to the realization that it's OK that I don't go shopping with her. It gives her time to spend with our daughters (one of which is a teenager) and with her friends, and actually have a good time without me constantly complaining and making faces.

And that gives me time to enjoy beautiful, lovely, relaxing game time at home. Except for when I hit certain buttons by accident and those ridiculously loud dragon shouts blast out of my surround system and scare the crap out of me. Not so quiet and relaxing then.

And when I'm gaming I also can't tease her for watching those awful Lifetime movies which I really shouldn't make fun of considering I enjoy watching grown men in tights running around beating baddies up.

So yeah, wish I had a gaming spouse but better she spends her time leveling up Cooking because I can't cook to save my life (and she's pretty fantastic in the kitchen!).

Oh and there was a brief period in which we gamed together and that was co-op Diablo for the Playstation. But to this day, what to me seemed like a blissful time of bonding and bashing skeleton heads together is to her a nightmare: everytiime I ask her to play a co-op game with me she'll say, "No thanks, I don't want to hear you yelling and screaming the whole time... I remember Diablo...".

Oh, come on! That was like 15 years ago!!!! I've grown up!

[Lizard_King]

My wife's gateway drug was Kingdom Hearts 2, of all things, and her instant mastery of fake guitar (all those years of classical music training paying off at last!) probably helped give her a sense of what it's like when you really dominate in a videogame context. From there, a strange affinity for Halo and clobbering Portal long after I gave up brought her over all the way, and she has since become far more devoted to current gen Bioware than I could ever be. If I tried to convert someone on purpose, I think I would have failed, but because her curiosity was the prime mover (as well as having all of my videogame junk sitting around while I was deployed) it ended up working out, and we're both on our second playthrough of Dark Souls on and off coop.

I would imagine the "other" solo hobby approach also works, but I can't imagine something that I enjoy so much being looked at with serious disdain by my spouse. That sounds really difficult, and I would have to really take apart my own attitudes towards her hobbies to see if I were encouraging hostility/scorn myself or if, in fact, it was simply her deal.

[Quaro]

From zero all the way to Dark Souls. Awesome.

[Relayer71]

From zero all the way to Dark Souls. Awesome.


Yes, that's some feat!

[Relayer71]

Word of warning to the unmarried folks here : I married a non-gaming spouse and it's been a constant source of conflict in the 17 years we've been married. She views video games as silly and childish, and does not attempt to hide her scorn for them. It has been a constant source of hard feelings on both sides the entire time we've been together. Granted, years ago, before we had kids, I had a wicked Everquest addiction for several months that caused a lot of conflict and in retrospect was totally my fault (which I've owned up to). That was nearly 15 years ago though, and in the last 12 years since we had kids my gaming has been limited to mostly late nights after everyone else has gone to bed and my "social obligations" to my family have been fulfilled. Despite this, I still get unending grief over my hobby, as if somehow I will just one day "grow up" and realize how ridiculous it looks for a grown man to be killing orcs and dragons on a computer screen. The resentment that attitude causes in the gaming spouse is real and palpable, and has a negative effect on the marriage.

I would highly recommend that people who enjoy video games marry other people who at least think they are fun. You shouldn't have to restrict your dating to nothing but hardcore gamers or anything, but at least find someone who enjoys playing board games, card games and the occasional Mario Kart or similar game, otherwise the gulf between you on this subject could be a real issue in your relationship. There may be a change in the wind in my house though, as after 17 years of never giving me anything computer or gaming related as a gift, I got Skyrim from my wife this Christmas. I suspect it was as much to distract me from the fact that she bought the "family" an iPad for Christmas as anything else, but at least it's a small start.

And yeah, I've tried playing games with my wife, and so have my kids. We've tried everything from simple Wii sports games to Bejeweled, she simply sucks at them which only serves to piss her off even more. What someone said up thread is totally true, it's very hard for someone who did not grow up playing games and is 40+ with no gaming experience to suddenly "get" video games.

Wow, I feel really bad for you! My wife could care less about video games but she loves getting me them as presents knowing how much I love them. She never even held my DAoC addiction against me some years back!

I have to say though, that it's all about balance. She won't mind me spending hours per week gaming as long as I manage to spend some time with her. I don't think that'd be the case if all I did on my free time was game and completely ignore her which I know some gamers are guilty of, especially when some shiny new game comes along, especially of the MMO variety!

[Scuzz]

Or my solution: find someone with a different but equally time-consuming and silly hobby. For example, my wife likes to quilt. I pretend to understand her hobby, and she pretends to understand mine. I occasionally even manage to rope her into to something quite casual, like Pixel Junk monsters. So I don't think it's necessary to find a "gaming spouse" per se, but rather to find someone who understands the idea of having a (basically solitary) hobby.


My computer is in the den, across from her sewing machine. I have learned to play my games while ignoring the whining of the damn sewing machine. But being in the same room makes her happy and she has learned not to interrupt me if I am in a battle with something. She also loves to quilt.

[Kael]

I'm always looking for new games to play with my wife, neither of us are action gamers so it limits our options. We beat Diablo 2 countless times together so Im looking forward to Torchlight 2 and Diablo 3.

My wife prefers cooperative games (like diablo 2). We have fun with the Elemental Tower Defense mods (where you play tower defense games at the same time and have limited interaction with each other) but she tires of games where we compete (i really should let her win every once in a while).

Last week we played a lot of Just Dance 3, Mario Kart, Wii Sports and Tropico 4 together (we start a campaign at the same time and see who finishes first, accompanied by yelling and screaming as tornadoes hit, etc).

[JDSIDD]

I feel bad for the guys who have problems because of gaming. I just don't understand why people have the need to put down other forms of entertainment. Seriously, watching football and drinking beer is more adult than playing a game? Its always the same story: "The stuff I like is for smart adults. The stuff you like is for stupid children. Why don't you grow up and start liking the stuff you're supposed to like?" Ok, I do understand. There's a lot of stuff other people like that I find terrible but I try not to give them shit about it.

Fortunately my fiance shrugs off my gaming because, "it's guy stuff." She claims not to like it but I constantly catch her playing Plants vs Zombies on her phone. She's played Farmtown for years (never spent a dime on it), likes Mario and Spyro but claims not to like gaming. The biggest hurdle to getting her into playing video games is that she gets horrible motion sickness. She can't even watch me navigate menus on the Xbox without feeling a little sick. At least she doesn't give me any shit about it so I don't give her shit about her Lifetime movies and her Big Bang Theory (what a godawful show).

[rowe33]

I've tried in vain to date and/or cohabitate with a non-gamer but it never worked well. So it was definitely important to me to find a wife who was a gamer (Dragon Age, Civ, Diablo, etc) on her own. Just need to make sure our daughter has the gaming bug also!

[Staff Sergeant]

My lady pokes fun at my excessive participation in the NHL12 ladder in my house (#1 out of 10, bitches) but I'm pretty sure she is fine with it. At one point she recommended that I take a break from working and play some Skyrim with my friend. I don't think she actually knows (or cares) what Skyrim is, but it was cute.

As for playing games with her, games for me are really just something to do to pass the time if I don't have anything better to do during a short daily break or if I have a large extended period of no work such as the long winter break. There are other things I'd much rather do with her, and get your mind out of the gutter that's not the only thing I'm referring to.

[Brian Rubin]

I’m a little in awe of you people with gaming spouses/significant others. My experience with girlfriends over the years has ranged from amused tolerance to contempt, but never anything close to a shared experience. My current girlfriend is the one in the “contempt” category – she had disdain for it before she met me and the years of watching me raid in WoW did not help the cause. It’s levelled off since I stopped playing that game very much, but it’s still very much an alien concept to her and her entire family. Men don’t play video games, they fix things and watch Hockey. It’s hard for me to even imagine sharing a game like Dark Souls or the like with my partner. I can’t be the only one in this situation....
Sounds like you need to find someone who accepts this part of you, as well as everything else. ;) Hope that isn't too harsh, but I've been with girls who didn't accept my video games and it was just part of the reason it didn't ultimately work out.

Now I'm with an amazing girl who doesn't game much herself -- though she did play 8 hours of Prototype straight after a rough week -- but has no problem with me playing games while she surfs the net or has work to do at home. She totally accepts my video gaming side -- as she should, it's a huge part of who I am -- and even made her first purchase of a video game for my Christmas present.

Good luck!

[Hansey]

I met my husband directly because of gaming, Thief, the Dark Project specifically... we met at TTLG shortly after Thief came out. (Interestingly, I am aware of at least three other successful marriages of people who met on TTLG, and I sometimes wonder how many others there were that I don't know about.)

We met online in 2000, met in real life in 2001 and are coming up on eight years marriage this April. The thing that we've always shared is gaming. He's now a game developer and I, well, I still play them. ;) We mostly like the same kinds of games too, which helps, though you'll never see me playing DOTA2, LOL or any of the MOBA's, while he's unlikely to play any of city builders that I adore.

I'm certain that if we hadn't met, there's no way he would have ended up with a non-gamer for a wife.

[Brian Rubin]

That's adorable, Hansey, and congrats on 8 years! :)

[Alan Au]

Note to self: start checking TTLG again.

[mystery]

I've recently joined a tabletop campaign (AD&D 3.5e) for the first time in...decades. I'm friends with most of the people in the group, but never took them up on their offer.

As it turns out, the group is 3 couples, and me. We all go over to the same house, we all bring food, and we let the kids roam free while gathering around a table to push miniatures at each other and make nerd jokes. We're all over 40...some of us more than others...and we're all gamers from way back when.

Of the 3 couples there, 2 of the couples met in an MMO (one marriage made in EQ, one in CoH).

[Nathan]

My fiancée is into JRPGs, so when one comes along that we can play together, we will. The last two Pokemon games in particular have been great, as we'll get the different versions and trade stuff. We also had fun with Dragon Quest IX, as we were able to trade stuff and go around to the in-store promotional events.

I picked up Skyrim for the Xbox, thinking that what would probably happen is that I'd play and she'd kibitz, but she started her own character right away. She didn't have any experience with console-FPS controls, so for the first couple of days it was kind of agonizing to watch her play. Lots of floor and ceiling-gazing. She picked it up pretty quick though, and right now her save game shows well over a hundred hours of playtime.

[The Mad Hatter]

My girlfriend has been a little more tolerant lately, I think partly because I'm more into console gaming. That puts me in the living room, so I'm able to share the experience of watching TV to a certain extent (we have two TVs in the living room). I can play Dark Souls and still discuss the people on that program where they show you what a terrible dresser you are and give you a new wardrobe.

Her eight year old son is a big gamer too, probably because of me. The Lego games are great for him, monster truck racing, etc. That's a shared experience sometimes, but I find split screen gaming gives me a headache very quickly. Still, sometimes we're all watching him play.

[Torsion]

My wife and I have been together for 20 years (well almost, end of January to be precise) and in that time we've always enjoyed gaming. In the early days we'd spend whole weekends playing super mario on the NES or Speedball on my old Amiga. I never get any grief for buying games or hardware (Its a different ball game if I need parts or some new shiny stuff for my Triumph).

Currently my wife is into things like Puzzle Quest, Faerie Solitare and Terraria/Minecraft. I'm trying to get her to play Blood Bowl now, she liked the look of the Blood Bowl LE I purchased in the Xmas sale on Steam. We used to play the original boardgame when it first released here in the UK. We'll spend an evening sharing a bottle of wine and throw some dice...good times.

[SlyFrog]

My wife and I play games together. We're not as good at keeping video games going. She didn't grow up with them, and still just has a hard time doing the things like taking corners in FPSs that a lot of the rest of us just do by muscle memory. But we play things like Lego Star Wars, and I think that getting a couple of copies of Diablo III when it comes out to play together would be a good idea (if her older computer can handle it).

Where we really shine are board games. In the last few weeks we've (in this case including my two kids) played Brass and Merchants & Marauders, and are currently in the middle of a game of Power Grid. Eclipse will be up next.

She even plays things like Magic Realm and Advanced Squad Leader with me.

[ElGuapo]

Its always the same story: "The stuff I like is for smart adults. The stuff you like is for stupid children. Why don't you grow up and start liking the stuff you're supposed to like?" Ok, I do understand. There's a lot of stuff other people like that I find terrible but I try not to give them shit about it.



Yeah, watching sports passively on TV is for stupid children. Playing videogames is clearly for smart adults. :)

(sorry sports fans)

[Matt Bowyer]

My wife, Meghan (who posts here occasionally!), played a fair amount of games as a kid (Link to the Past, Lion King, Castlevania, the various Marios, Dragon Warrior, and the like. She took the N64/PS1 generations off, and fell out of interest until we got together.

When we were spending long days together during the early part of our relationship, where we were less dating and more spending sunup to sundown together, we'd have fairly regular days, which for me meant playing video games, once I cleared it with her. I played through some of the Zelda games and she watched, since she loved the series more than anything else growing up. After that, I thought that I should try playing a game with a deep story for her, to see what she thought of these new-fangled arr-pee-gees, since I'd talked them up before. I put in Final Fantasy X.

She was instantly in love with the game, and we played through the whole thing together, with me handling the controls and Meghan looking up information online to help me through difficult parts and guide me through puzzles. After the ending, after about 80 hours of game, she looked at me and said, "You are going to play another one of these right now and it had better be HAPPY."

I still do about 75% of the gameplaying in our house, but we have a list of games I'm not allowed to play if she's not in the same room watching (Final Fantasy anything, Uncharted, Assassin's Creed, The Elder Scrolls, Ratchet & Clank, Persona, Xenoblade, etc.). We're playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword together, with me manning the guide and her the controls for the overworld, and reversing that for the dungeons since games went full 3-D and tricky during her time off. She's got her own games that she plays -- the Sims, Harvest Moon, Rune Factory, older Zelda titles, and some dabbling in MMOs and Minecraft. Her biggest claim to fame thus far is getting everything -- EVERYTHING -- in Skies of Arcadia, something I never did myself, including all of the silly-hard bounty battles.

It's a good life.

[Brian Rubin]

My girlfriend has been a little more tolerant lately...
Tolerant? For some reason this irks me...

[Hunty]

I'm lucky that my fiancé (still getting the hang of that) is pretty down with the games. She enjoys them but has very definite genres that she sticks to, and is nowhere near as into them as me. She probably wouldn't play anywhere near as much without my influence.

That said, she's fun to play with (ahem) and more than holds her own on the stuff shes' interested in. She grew up playing Commander Keen and Mario, so she's pretty accomplished at 2D stuff. We often play PSN/Live Arcade style games together. We even took it in turns to do Super Meat Boy, although she bailed out on World 4. She's also pretty tasty at Mario Kart. Loves the Sims, didn't like Portal 2 as much as Portal. Oh, and she's big on boardgames. Even bigger than me. She loves getting introduced to stuff I pick up off here.

She can't quite get the hang of controlling cameras, so that's often a stumbling block. She won't play anything too shooty or "murderous" eithe. What constitutes murderous is fairly arbitrary; she chopped her way through Castle Crashers with me no probs.

She's fairly tolerant of my gaming habits too. She finds it adorably geeky and loves taking the piss when I'm in my headphones playing Battlefield with my concentrating face, or posting on here. That said, I try and keep it balanced and she is not averse to giving me severe stick if I've overstepped the mark. Which is no bad thing, I think. I'd much rather have a varied life that includes an hour or so of playing most nights with the odd bigger splurge than be a 6-hour-a-night zombie.

[aganazer]

I met my wife in Thailand. Her first exposure to video games happened when I had to leave for work and she would be home alone all day with nothing to do. All I had loaded up on the PC was GTA3 Vice City. I quickly showed her the controls, watched her wreck a car then took off to work.

At the time her English wasn't very good. Within a week she had the mouth of a sailor. Her mastery of swear words was impressive as was her driving skills. Before long she owned the town, driving her ice-cream truck around collecting cash from all the shops she bought. These skills came in handy once she entered the American restaurant workforce.

Fast forward a few years, we are in America now. She was the undisputed top healer in our WoW raiding guild with so many friends she couldn't even respond to them all. Since then she has gone casual, taking up more girly interests, but we still seek out every coop game we can find.

The moral of the story is that Asian girls dig games.

[ElGuapo]

Can we tell some funny "Awwww, how cute" stories about gaming with significant others/spouses?

I introduced her to Halo 3, where the opening has you in a little clearing and then you go down a path into some waterfalls, some drop downs, and then into combat. We are in the opening area, I'm ahead of her and she's following me. I look around and don't see her behind me, so I look at her side of the screen and she's running against a wall back at the start area, completely disoriented and getting frustrated.

It made me realize that all the "skills" we have honed over the years as gamers should not be taken for granted for non gamers. If you think about it, even a fairly simple game like Halo 3 uses all of the buttons in the pad for something, and at times they are all useful or essential. For the first few levels I had to constantly go back to her and make her look at me "Look at me! Look at me!" in order to orient herself so we could move on. That "warp to the person furthest ahead" feature was a great feature of that game.

I admit though, I did like the fact that when we were in combat she'd become overwhelmed and I'd have to run in, all hero like, to rescue her and beat the badguys down. "I'm coming baby! Hang on!" There is nothing like gaming with your lover. Much different than gaming with a friend.

[metta]

My bride (Sula) wasn't a gamer when we met, and sort of thought that games were violent, sexist, misogynist pablum. Cut to 12 years later and she's completed all kinds of games by herself and we often play together, wether it's Xbox, NDS, D&D, or board games (we have a monthly board gaming group).
I think there are a few reasons for this transformation:

1) She trusted my judgement and assumed that whatever I was involved with wouldn't be sexist, misogynist garbage, so she was interested in what I was doing and chose to take a closer look. (What she learned was that games are just like any other medium - movies or books or music - there is sexist dreck and there is quality entertainment crafted by thoughtful people.)

2) My game playing was never a wedge between us. I was always happy to share and show her what I was doing. Gaming was never something I was doing instead of hanging out with her.

Sula loved the Baldur's Gate series (completing it twice), and No One Lives Forever and Culdcept SAGA and Diablo and WoW and games from all kinds of genres.

I never expected to have a partner who was a gamer but I'm thrilled that things have turned out this way. Sharing hobbies is so important and there's not much that makes me smile like hearing her shout "Something is mindflaying (me)!!" :D

[Jag]

"I'm coming baby! Hang on!" There is nothing like gaming with your lover.

Non-gamers who also use that phrase with their lovers would disagree with you.

[Slainte Mhath]

Just need to make sure our daughter has the gaming bug also!

I should add to my original post that my wife's tolerance of gaming has increased slightly in recent years due to the fact that both our children play regularly. Our 12 year old son is a total Xbox addict, and also enjoys the occasional strategy game or FPS on the PC as well. Our 8 year old daughter loves her DS and the Wii, and likes various simple PC games too. Both of them discovered Minecraft over the summer and love to create new worlds and build stuff. My son also stays connected to a lot of his friends from school and family that live far away by using Xbox Live to game and chat with them, and I think that has softened my wife's disdain for games a bit as well.

I also think it's important for us to spend time together after the kids are in bed. Even if it's just watching something on TV it still gives us time spent together without the kids and time to communicate. I'm lucky in that I'm a night owl and she's usually ready for bed by 10:00pm, which gives me a window of opportunity most nights for some game time. I know she would prefer that I simply go to bed when she does, and sometimes I do, but I think she's also come to realize that I need that "decompression" time doing my own thing as well. Still, when it's all said and done I really wish I had married someone more accepting of my hobby.

[Sepiche]

I just recently moved in with my girlfriend who's a fairly avid gamer. She keeps herself fairly busy with other activities, but enjoys relaxing with some games a few times a week usually. I definitely play more than she does though.

It's great in that she doesn't look down on my preferred hobby and actively plays with me sometimes, but it is a bit of a double edged sword in that I'm used to my computer time being a complete escape from the world and time when I can completely turn off some parts of my brain and just immerse myself in whatever I'm playing. It's also been a pretty big change for me since previously I'd lived alone for close to 10 years, but things are certainly better than they would be if she didn't "get" my gaming.

If I was looking for someone new I wouldn't completely write off a non-gamer, but I can't imagine getting along with someone for an extended period if they were constantly complaining about games being childish.


I'm lucky in that I'm a night owl and she's usually ready for bed by 10:00pm, which gives me a window of opportunity most nights for some game time. I know she would prefer that I simply go to bed when she does, and sometimes I do, but I think she's also come to realize that I need that "decompression" time doing my own thing as well. Still, when it's all said and done I really wish I had married someone more accepting of my hobby.
That's pretty much the exact thing that makes things work for us. She goes to bed early and I stay up late. That gives us a bit of time alone to unwind which is very important to both of us.

[Rory Stewart]

I once played a snowboarding game on a neighbour's Gamecube with my girlfriend, she got very excited at first which was cool but she got a bit too excited/took it too seriously.

The highlight was probably her aiming herself at a ramp with great, quiet concentration until she hit it and while floating through the air she screamed "LAY THAT BITCH!!!!" at the top of her lungs.

She doesn't even really know what she meant by it, the emphasise was on "lay" for some reason rather than "that" or "bitch".

I really want to play GoW with her.

[Staff Sergeant]

The highlight was probably her aiming herself at a ramp with great, quiet concentration until she hit it and while floating through the air she screamed "LAY THAT BITCH!!!!" at the top of her lungs.

This is hilarious and I could definitely see my girlfriend doing something like that too.

[Tman]

My wife and I married before computer gaming really took off. Oh sure, I was a leisure suit larry fan back in the text based adventure days, but those were honeymoons.

My gaming addiction didn't rear it's ugly head until descent 3 came out and she became a widow and we almost got divorced. Luckily, I saw the light, toned it WAY down and it's been decent ever since.

Actually, it's even gotten better because I play games with my kids. Their steam accounts have almost as many games as I do. I think she appreciates that we play together as a family.

The thing is I remember a few games my wife and I played together - they were "detective puzzle" games - like myst, but not myst. I can't recall the name of it, but basically it was an adventure game without any fighting. She really liked it when we sat together and "solved" these over the course of several weeks.

Now that I think of it, I wonder if these types of games exist - I was playing mass Effect 2 the other day and she sat down and commented how good / realistic the graphics were. I think she might be ready.

Do these type of adventure games exist? Any coop by chance or just SP?

[Hansey]

The Nancy Drew games are actually excellent. They're not graphically up there a la Mass Effect, but they're well done with challenging puzzles. I really enjoy them. In fact, I have an entire notebook that's filled with notes and drawings and diagrams used when solving assorted Nancy Drew puzzles. ;)

There are a number of them on Steam, and the older ones are fairly inexpensive (should have posted sooner, they were dirt cheap during the Christmas sale!), maybe give one of them a try and see how she likes them.