On Family and Gaming

Sorry about the delay in posting - I can't really get onto Blogger from my parents computer, so I've been forced to travel from coffee shop to coffee shop in search of free wifi.


My family has never really understood my love of gaming.

I mean sure, they tolerated it, but the whole concept always seemed sort of foreign to them. My mom used to play a game or two of Sim City and my dad played an old Mac flight sim whose name escapes me for a week, but there's never been a game that captivated them, that got them excited in the same way I was to play the new Mario game or to beat my friends online in C&C.

The past two nights I've been getting a bit of a surprise though.

I brought my Wii home for Thanksgiving - I've only had it for a few days, and I thought the vacation would be a great time to work on Zelda. Also, I sort of hoped that Nintendo wasn't just blowing smoke when they were talking about the accessibility of the Wii - that it really would appeal to non-gamers.

Wednesday night I hooked up the system, inserted Wii Sports, and invited my family to gather round. My sister was the one who took to it first - she had a great time creating her Mii avatar and playing around with the various options. This was to be expected - of anyone in the family, she was closest to me in terms of gaming, having been sucked into Ocarina of Time all those years ago. The rest of the family seemed sort of interested, but there was still an air of humoring me with my "weird hobbies." But when I booted up Wii sports, everything started to change. They started cheering when someone got a strike in bowling. They debated over what effect the speed of swinging remote had on hitting a baseball. They were having fun. Playing games. The highlight of the night was my 55 year old father and my 59 year old uncle facing off against each other in baseball, swinging the controllers around like madmen. If you had told me that I would ever see them so into playing a video game, I wouldn't have believed you. But there they were, swinging up a storm. Inconcievable.

But it didn't end there.

I assumed that everyone had enjoyed it, but they considered it passing diversion. The next night, however, my mom said "Matt, why don't you show everyone your games?" *???* My MOTHER was asking me to show off my games? What weird alternate dimension was this? I dutifully booted up the system, and immediately my uncle wanted to make a Mii. Then my sister's friend. Then my other uncle. We spent almost half an hour with everyone commenting, offering direction, and generally having a fun time over the character creation system. Insane. Then we booted up Wii Sports, and the real fun began. Other than my grandfather, everyone played that night. Bowling, golf, tennis - we played them all, and cheered and booed everything that happened. My mom and dad faced off in bowling, and we swiftly took sides, encouraging and trash talking every event on screen.

Nintendo succeeded. That's it. They hit the ball out of the park - over the past two nights, I've witnessed a group of people who never understood video games or the people who played them having a ball in front of the TV. I don't doubt that every single person there last night would love to play again. Nintendo has created a product that has knocked down the conceptual barrier between the controller and the screen, and as a result have created a real system for non-gamers. This obviously doesn't spell success for them long term, but if they can get audiences who ordinarily would never touch a 360 to try this out along with creating enough accessible games to get them hooked, they're going to tap into a market that Microsoft and Sony could only dream of.

As a final note, when I woke up this morning, I could dimly hear noises from the TV downstairs. When I walked into the family room, i witnessed my Dad, the epitome of non-gamer, practicing his bowling.