You don’t. No seriously… but what you can do, is have her enjoy your hobby with you. We’re here to give you some good advice. In this serie of articles we’re going to have a look at the things you can do with your girlfriend that might actually make her enjoy spending time with you in the virtual world.
Chapter One: How to introduce games
Before we can start with enjoying videogames with our significant others, we must start accepting a few facts of life. First of, she’s a woman and probably in charge of everything in your life. Second, gaming is your hobby not hers. Just as walking in the forest, having a picknick or baking cakes is her hobby, not yours. Also, she probably isn’t into violence as much as you are. Now I know all woman are different and there will be quite a few violence-loving girls out there, but in the little time I’ve been roaming this beautiful world of ours, I encountered more girls who are into flowers then into mindless murder.
Which brings us to our first point of advice.. Don’t try to lure her in with ‘Call of Duty’, ‘Metal Gear Solid’ or ‘The Witcher’. Next time we will go into some games you could try, but let us spoil a bit already, It’ll be a hell of a lot closer to ‘Hello Kitty Island Adventure’ and ‘Mario Kart’ then the aforementioned. Try to think of games that are not build around destruction and chaos. Especially if she is not into gaming, she will most likely enjoy creativity over destruction.
Remember the time you started playing Uncharted 3 just after dinner and after what you thought was only a few hours, you realised everybody and everything around you has gone to sleep ages ago? Well, chances are, your girlfriend is not going to lose track of time the first few times she’ll try a game. Which might be why I failed to hook my girlfriend on the amazing Final Fantasy X. She watched the cutscene (Truthfully, the metal music didn’t help much either.), walked up to Auron, fought some Sinspawn, watched another cutscene… … aaand got bored. I believe her exact words were: “If I want to see a movie, I’ll just put on a movie.” The good thing about Final Fantasy in general though, is that is has a very user-friendly interface. At least at the start. To take number X as example again, As long as you do not input any commands, the enemy will not perform any actions either. Though this might scare of some people, this is extremely helpful when trying to explain a game, or just to get used to it. Also, there are few buttons needed to play. With just the controlstick, Cross- and Circle button, you will be able to come quite far. Add the triangle button for the menu when ready and you pretty much know the basics. I believe this is the key reason why the Nintendo Wii was able to get so many new people into gaming, even our grandparents knew what button to press.
So that adds up quite a few conditions games have to meet in order to be a good gateway into gaming, especially to somebody who does not enter on their own accord. Not too violent, Gameplay over story, not too many buttons needed, not too time-consuming.. Next time we’re going to have a look at some games that fulfil many (or all) of these requirements so you can start introducing them to your study case… eh, I mean girlfriend.
Disclaimer:
This serie of articles is both meant as advice to help people enjoy virtual time with their significant other as well as a work of satire. Many of the things said about men, women and relationships are not (even close to) the truth and are ment to provoke a giggle or two.. not your eternal wrath. Here at PressQuit we love women, even more so if they are holding a controller. preferably their own!
Header photo property of AminaResheidat
