What My Parents Taught Me About Video Games

[My Mom and Dad]

Part of the reason I ended up doing game journalism is, I think, because of my Dad. He was a tech journo when I was a kid, which meant we had everything in the house worth playing for a good chunk of my lucky, lucky youth, and it means he's still pretty up on things today.

Whenever I wonder about the Wii's new audience, I just picture my early-fifties Mom holding the Wii Remote and declaring, ecstatically, a revelation to my father: "Michael! I'm really doing it!" That was a pretty promising day, I thought, because up until then the only involvement Mom had with video game consoles was to passive-aggressively vaccuum over the controller cords while I was trying to play.

So when my parents drove me back to New York City after I spent Thanksgiving in Massachusetts with them, I decided to show my parents some more new stuff, educate them about the miracle of new technology and the richness of present-day player experiences. I think I ended up learning more than they did, though.

My Dad Is Sony's Ideal Audience

This time, my Dad wanted to know about the PlayStation 3. Jack Tretton would thrill if he could hear Dad tell Mom all about how the PS3 is worth its price for the Blu-ray player alone -- and plus, said Dad, the PS3 has Tourist Trophy. Vehicle games are a major selling point to my motorcycle hobbyist father.

To gamers, the much-touted PS3 Blu-ray drive justifies the console's decidedly uncompetitive price just about as much as Nintendo still makes "hardcore" games -- which is to say it's a hilarious idea. First, we all saw how angling the PS3 as anything other than a video game console came to bite Sony -- and how fast they backpedaled as publishers showed signs of skittishness. Now, everyone who'd like to see the platform succeed knows that it needs to be cheaper, and hangs the blame on the Blu-ray decision.

When Kaz Hirai introduced the PS3 by enthusing about Blu-ray, and became upset that no one was interested in Ridge Racer, we all wondered who Hirai thought he was talking to. Guess it was my Dad -- turns out that Blu-ray drive is a significant factor to someone after all.

Dad wanted to check out a game with cars, though, and I had the excellent Midnight Club: Los Angeles for the Xbox 360 on hand. Knowing him, I had to hurry to skip the introductory cut scenes in order to get to the gameplay. After all, this was one of my rare opportunities to share my hobby (and my career) with my parents hands-on -- they tend to glaze over during my articles -- and I knew that if Dad had to sit through dialogue he'd lose interest.

MCLA held Dad's attention for about five minutes. He liked accelerating, but complained that he hates playing an analog stick with his left hand (he's right handed). He tried flipping the controller upside down to reverse the situation, but, of course, that reverses the controls, too. After about 30 seconds of playing the 360 controller in his lap with his hands crossed, he had enough.

If You've Got A Gun, It's A Shooter

I decided to see what my parents thought of Fallout 3, expecting them to be floored by just how far games had come since I was a brat mashing buttons on their living room floor. I loaded up a save that I had just outside Vault 101, where the nuclear wasteland was breathtaking and ready to explore.

"What is this?" Mom asks. "Where are you supposed to be?"

"It's post-apocalyptic Washington," I tell her. "It's really, really cool."

"It doesn't look like Washington," says Mom. "It just looks like... I don't know what." She is not impressed. "How is this Washington?" she keeps wanting to know.

"So this is a first-person shooter, huh?" Dad says.

"No," I insist. "It's more like an RPG, where --"

"Well then, what's that?" Dad points at the screen, where my big pistol is filling up the corner of the first-person view. "Why do you have a gun if it's not a shooter? It sure looks like a shooter to me." He does this partly because he knows he's oversimplifying and thinks it's funny that I'm getting irritated (and now you know where my contrarian nature comes from).

I have to admit, though, he really does have a point.

I start explaining to my parents all about action RPGs, and how FO3 isn't really an FPS, and I'm trying to talk about "actions affect the gameworld" and "death of the American dream" and "environmental storytelling," and suddenly it sounds ridiculous to me.

For just a minute, I see the game as my parents see it -- a guy with a gun trundling across a wasteland. The end.

What Are You?

Instead, I decide to start thinking of the things Mom would enjoy about a game console. She loves casual games, and she pretends to be a technophobe, but if she actually has a chance to acclimate to social media-type things, she tends to get hooked. So I explain to her about small downloadables, indie games, online casual titles and leaderboards, and the only thing I have on hand as an example is PixelJunk Eden. It's no Zuma or anything, but I feel pretty convinced that my parents will find it more relatable than FO3.

It's kind of an art game, I explain, I talk a lot about music and color and flowers growing, and then I put it on.

"This isn't colorful," says Mom, wondering if she's missed something. "I just see blue."

"Well, the colors change when you get these things... you have to pop all these flowers --"

"What flowers?"

It's a little more understandable to them after I play for a minute or two, pollinate a few seeds and keep climbing, but Mom needs to know, "What are you? Is that, like, a scorpion?"

The question of what are you has always seemed highly irrelevant to me when playing PixelJunk Eden -- but, honestly, my best friend, who's a much more acclimated gamer, frequently gets hung up on the same issue.

"Nah," says Mom, after some assessment. "I don't think I would like this."

"Mom wouldn't like this," Dad agrees.

Still, my parents might get a PS3. But the real takeaway of their test drive, for me, was their perspective on this little capsule of my everyday living room experience.

And, you know, my parents aren't totally clueless.

"Your writing isn't as good as you think it is, you know," said my Dad to me earlier on the road trip. "Your articles are too long. You need to at least break things up with subheads, or add some pictures, or something. If nobody gets to the bottom of your article, you're wasting time."

My Dad definitely knows a thing or two about this stuff.