‘Early Gaming Experiences’ or ‘How my parents lost interest’

(Note: this was intended to be submitted to Corvus Elrod’s October round table, but I stalled out in the second paragraph and never returned to it. Hopefully I’ll do better for November’s topic.)

As the oldest child, I was the “experienced” gamer in my family, leading my younger brother and sister through 8-bit NES worlds tucked behind the dusty screen of our TV. I showed them exactly how to blow into the cartridges and slide them in not quite all the way so the plastic would smack against the console’s lip to “make the game work.”

My family played Mario together. It was the only game that could tear my mom away from Pac-Man on our ancient computer. We traded off each time Mario died, even when I told my sister falling into the pits would give her an extra life. My siblings and I all shared the frustration of losing our Zelda saved games, throwing the sturdy Nintendo controllers around the room.

We saved up our allowance and went to the store to find the game with the coolest box art without any knowledge of reviews. Even the duds were played for hours upon hours.

Somehow this “gaming golden age” faded though–as games grew increasingly more complex our mother left the room first, then our sister, and even our dad gave up on the sports simulations, claiming he liked the football game on his computer that displayed only X’s and O’s. Gaming was mainstream for our family then, but only my brother and I stuck with it as the audience narrowed and the controls grew numerous.

Our sister finally found adventure games, and played them all, walkthroughs always at her side, but my mom and dad never recovered. “Games are a waste of money,” they would say, though they had experienced hours of joy just years before playing games with their children.

Now my goal is to bring them back into the fold. I need to invite my dad over for a few beers and then a few hours of Rock Band 2, a game I’m sure he would love. My mom is excited about visiting to play Wii Fit so our family can have a weight loss competition and work together to exercise more.

Saying that casual games are destroying gaming is horribly wrong. If anything, “hardcore” games destroyed gaming, and “casual” games are bringing it back. Games for gamers will always exist, but think about the gaming utopia that will exist when we can talk to anyone we pass on the street, no matter what age, and we’ll all have a common experience in play.