Gamer Time: two can play at this

I play a decent number of games a year, and i have a girlfriend. Therefore, my girlfriend spends a fair amount of time sitting next to me waiting for me to stop playing and come up with something that will entertain us both.

Often, i am able to come up with something decent, like going to King Taco or playing with the cat. But I always wished I could find a way to make her interested in playing games. I know she thinks games are interesting, having seen her look up from her computer and watch cut scenes, boss fights and dialogue tree exchanges time and time again.  But every time I offered, she demurred.

Cut to now - she got 47 out of 49 achievements (955 out of 1000 gamer points) in the last game she played and is asking me when the next Assassin's Creed is coming out. What was holding her back? How did I get her to play? Here is what worked for me.

I started with some research. I plumbed the vast recesses of the Internet.  Once I found jack and shit, I tried forums.  A few forums recommended starting with a family game like Hasbro Game Night.  Which is cool.  Who doesn't enjoy a game of scrabble (or as I call it, "the breakup game") every now and then?  (Note: I did end up buying scrabble on XBLA because, come on, scrabble is dope. Yeah, we broke up but we got back together and I think we are stronger for it)

My next move was lazy in retrospect.  I thought maybe she would like to try a FPS versus death match...not so much.  I thought it was the violence that turned her off.

Well gentlemen, apparently, (some) ladies are not capable of using two joy sticks simultaneously upon first picking up a controller. I kind of forgot that at one time, I had to get used to analog sticks.  NES, SNES, and Genesis didn't have analog sticks, just a D-Pad.  I was cool with that.  Then the 64 came out and freaking Mario 64 changed the game. The analog stick made that game work for a 3D world.  But remember, the 64 controller only had one analog stick.  Not two.

This was probably for the best because it was like dipping one toe into the water before getting all the way in the bath. When the PS1 came out, I was ready and understood the mechanics of movement with an analog stick.  Golden eye had got me used to moving my hands around a controller and knowing button placement front, back and on the top.

Yet I immediately felt dizzy when playing FPS's because I would move my character's body much more fluidly than his head.  That is, I was used to using my left hand to control movement of the body in three dimensions, but my head was flying around like a bobble head.

This is likely due to a sort of over-build up in my left hand's coordination due to long term experience with the 64's analog stick.  But my right hand was a virgin (tee hee) and had some serious catching up to do in terms of coordination.  Once I got acclimated to the fluid movement and quick 360° strafing afforded by dual analog sticks, I never looked back (and by the way, I know some PC gamer is going to say that the keyboard & mouse have allowed for this manner of graceful movement since the 80's or something. Well I'm a console gamer dear sir, so you can help yourself to a family-size bag of jalapeno & cheddar flavored hamster dicks).

Anyway she didn't want to play Portal because it gave her a headache from the concentration required to move Chell's head and body with two different hands.  

Then I gave up and the problem literally sorted itself out.  I may be alone in thinking so, but Assassin's Creed 2 was the real revelation.

In June 2008, my girlfriend studied abroad in Italy.  She visited many cities, including Roma, Venezia and Firenze (Rome, Venice and Florence for those who don't speak the language of love).  She took a million pictures and talked endlessly about going back.  In November 2009, Assassin's Creed 2 came out.

One day she came home while I was playing it.  She walked by uninterested and then stopped dead in her tracks.  She recognized the building Ezio was climbing.  She had stood in front of it, taken pictures of it and had stood in line to enter it, so she remembered it.  The NPC's standing in front of the building spoke Italian.  The cities were recreated with such a level of detail that she immediately sat down and started pointing out buildings and landmarks to me as I traversed the city of Florence.  "That's the Ponte Vecchio!"

But when I started climbing the Florence Cathedral, she lost her shit.  She actually asked if she could play.  I giddily handed her the controller and began explaining the controls to her.  After a brief moment, she didn't want my input.  She just wanted to climb the cathedral.  Once she did, she started to understand the mechanics of the game.  Its a 3rd Person game, so the camera basically auto-adjusts.  This allowed her to ignore the second analog stick for the most part.  When platforming, she got used to occasionally using the second analog stick for refined camera angle changes to show gaps, ropes, chandeliers, and items obstructed with the natural view.

She didn't much care for the fighting (at first) but she immediately enjoyed collecting treasure, feathers and upgrading her equipment.

But this was just a taste.  Once I realized she enjoyed treasure hunting I introduced her to the Lego games from Telltale (we have played almost all of them).  These games also require little use of the second analog stick, allowing to continue playing and come to enjoy each game, instead of just frustrating her (and to those who would say, "Lego?  Those are baby games!" - I challenge you to beat a whole Lego game without having to resort to youtube for tips.  You will be reduced to a quivering pile of super-annoyed goo.  Even little baby Einstein would have been super annoyed by all the frustrating (and later obvious) puzzles). At first she would only play when I played.  Now she occasionally stays up later than me playing games.  She is the baddest treasure hunter I have ever seen.  Fuck Drake.

She went with me to the midnight launch of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and basically demanded I buy Revelations.  She even beat, on her own, AC1, which I personally gave up on due to its poor mechanics and insanely frustrating missions (the freaking guards have AI laser vision and see through buildings; so many failed synchronizations).

Now she mostly plays 3rd person games and is almost ready to give Skyrim a try (I fear what may become of our jobs and home if she were to also become addicted to Skyrim).

So there you go.  Treasure hunting, minimal use of the second analog stick, and interesting locales were the key to bringing my girlfriend into the world of gamers.  I hope it reads as good as it tastes.