your parents surprising reactions to videogames

[blizzaradragon]

One of the most surprising reactions from my parents was my dad, who played video games back in the day but only really things like Doom or Wolfenstein and stopped about a year after I was born, started playing WoW after watching me dick around on one of my characters. Got up to lvl 40 before realizing how much time he was sinking into playing too. Previously the only things I could get him to do was the occasional game of Mario Kart or Mario Party with my younger sister and me. This started getting him to branch out and try other games though, such as playing Halo 1-3 and trying Resident Evil 4.

With my mother, she never really got into video games but would support my sister and me with our hobbies. This included taking us to tournaments when we would want to try our skills. However, she got EXTREMELY into Pokemon when my sister and I started playing Red and Blue and has been into the series since as well. Back in the day, when you would see parents saying Pokemon was corrupting their children or their beliefs, my mom was one of the parents who would argue on the other side of the spectrum about how good Pokemon could be for kids. Some of these debates would get...heated. To the point that someone almost put her in the hospital "in the name of Jesus" and other such bull. Now though she's pretty much the video game parenting authority among her social circle thanks to this, so there's that I suppose. Thanks to her there's at least a few dozen kids growing up with games appropriate for all ages like Mario and Pokemon instead of playing CoD from age 8 onward.

 

[York_Beckett]

My mom enjoys various RPGs and adventure games (the likes of Zelda and such), although she doesn't play that often. She was really into Spyro for a while, but there haven't been any new games in a while (not counting Skylanders.)

Dad doesn't play games, but there is one exception:

When I was younger, I had trouble getting a star in Super Mario 64 (can't remember which one), pretty much because I had no idea how to do it. My mom tried, she didn't get it either.

Then my dad -who had never played a video game in his entire life- killed it on the first try, and another one after that.

To this day, Mario 64 remains the only game he has ever played and still seems to like. It was over 10 years ago, so I don't know if he'd still be good at it. While it might have been an easy star nowadays, it was still really cool.

 

[Xaio30]

I wish I could post something positive here.

Both of my parents are stone age people who still considers 1GB of bandwidth per day to be excessive and unnecessary.

 

[Idlemessiah]

I remember my mum thought it was weird that I was listening to 80s hair metal, then realised it was V-Rock on GTA Vice City. She thought that was pretty cool.

Also more recently she nearly died from laughter watching me play Surgeon Simulator.

 

[AidoZonkey]

My parents didnt pay much attention to what I played, my brothers were the ones who had the most impact when I was gaming. However, I remember playing donkey konga with my mum with her loving it, and I do remember trying to teach my dad a video game but he just could get into it. They never discouraged me from playing games and with rhythm games actually supported me playing them. Also any game that taught me a different language they loved so weirdly enough they did support me playing Assassins Creed as I learnt some Italian and some Turkish from the games

 

[Hieronymusgoa]

My parents never liked forbidding stuff in general so we could basically play whichever I was able to buy for my brother and me. But I guess at two times they were close to forbidding some of our games at least.
Once on a birthday of mine my brother played Dungeon Keeper 1 and someone of my friends asked why some of the creatures screamed that much.
He said quite serious:"They are being tortured" right when my mum walked in to ask us something. Oh boy...Awkward.

Next time was with the first GTA. My parents had friends over and their kid wasn't allowed to play a lot of computer games. So he was hooked when we showed him GTA. When his parents walked in to pick him up when they were leaving the father looked at the screen and said with a smile:"Oh that's this game where you have to run over people with a car, right?" Again the look on the face of my mother was, in hindsight, priceless, and I was again in the role of the diplomat who has to come up with a good explanation ("you can but then the police comes after you") to save the situation.

My parents loved Monkey Island 1+2 but apart from that they are no gaming people in general.

 

[SadisticFire]

My father is pretty big into MMO's. He played Lord of the Rings online for a few years when it came out, and is now on the star wars MMO. I keep *really* wanting to play with him(But I can't because I just can't get into MMO's. Skinnerbox ain't for me I guess), because my family really just doesn't do much anymore, just sit in our separate rooms with our computers. But my father is pretty approval of all the games I want as long as I've shown genuine interest for at least a month, and it's not an impulse want. He did let me play Wolf ET when I was six, which was pretty sweet. My mother when she was around was approving(I think) of most games. She really liked nintendo games. She hasn't exactly been around to get a more recent opinion, but I'd imagine she'd be pretty cool with it.

 

[Dyf91]

My dad loves playing video games and I'm pretty sure it always has. When I asked him and my mum about it they said it started from him playing pacman and space invaders etc. on the arcade machines in pubs etc.
My first console was the SNES and I played all of Donkey Kong Country 1-3 with my dad, and when he got his first gaming PC (a windows 95 one) we played some adventure games together like Monkey Island, Normality and Zork: Grand Inquisitor. It was awesome. He is also the person who got me into RTS games by introducing me to Age of Empires when I was a kid. We stopped playing games together as much when I started to get shooters on the PS2/Xbox as he really hates split screen, but he still has more games than me on Steam and often comes in to ask me for help on games... I think he is currently working his way through Skyrim a couple of hours at a time. (Best part is definitely that I can just use his Steam to play all the games he has bought xD)

My mum however cannot understand why me and my dad spend all our free time playing games, and pretty much only ever played Space Invaders.

 

[Galletea]

My mum loves playing Blur, my dad plays shooters and when my gran visits, she laughs at me when I get killed, while she plays bejewelled on the pc.

 

[Harlemura]

My mum doesn't play them at all, but she will watch and enjoy games she thinks look good. She's probably the biggest fan of Mirror's Edge that's never played the game.
My dad does sometimes play games, but not that often. Everybody's Golf (or Hot Shots to you 'Muricans) and Gran Turismo are only really his games of choice. He does sometimes get into watching games though, some I wouldn't expect. I didn't think a grouchy, 54 year old big tough man would particularly care for Alice: Madness Returns' story, but proven wrong I was.

 

[teebeeohh]

My parents really love to watch sports so when I told them I would adjust my sleeping schedule to watch ti3 they asked me about what exactly it was I told them and now they watch the games with me. I need explain a lot of things to them but they pick things up surprisingly quick. And watching the stream on their giant tv is amazing.

 

[DSK-]

My parents are now pretty softcore gamers, focusing on Facebook games.

However, in the past they were pretty damn hardcore as I've mentioned before. They'd have massive all nighters with friends playing on their Colecovision with games such as Pepper 2, Zaxxon, Defender, Donkey Kong, Frogger and Q*bert.

After I was born that was toned down, but when we got our first few Commodore Amigas' they went pretty hardcore again, playing games like Xenon Megablast, Project X, Hybris, Turrican (1, 2 & 3), Superfrog, Cannon Fodder and....Fruit Sallad.

Spoiler

My god people, the hours they would spend on Xenon, Project X...AND Fruit Sallad. I remember one time they stayed up 12 hours straight trying to beat the game and each other. I remember my mum doing the same with Super frog, which she loved. I remember going to bed, waking up at 7AM, getting a drink and finding her on the second level of World 4. Later on in the morning I found her in the secret level on the Moon.

When we got a PC, they mostly played a game compilation called Strategy Games of the World, and they mostly focused on Mancala and Nine mens morris - which my mum beat on the hardest difficulties after putting some serious hours in.

My dad and I would play C&C95 and Red Alert for hours, and we would often watch eachother play. We also played Carmageddon.

Hell, watching the PC defragment on Windows 95 was something we all watched whilst at the dinner table (lol)

Then after getting a newer PC my dad got into Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, it's expansions and Call of Duty (singleplayer only).



So yeah, I guess I could say I led a privleged life in regards to gaming

 

[unindexedsearchengine]

My mother was so mesmerized with Assassin's Creed 2 that she actually went with my idea to have a AC2 themed trip to Italy. We traveled to Venice, Forlí, San Gimignano and Florence. The whole trip was 2 weeks (we went by car), and it was amazing. All of us enjoyed it thoroughly. Now, she's almost as excited for the next AC game as I am. We already have everything booked for a trip to rome, and we're planning on visiting the holy land, Istanbul and after Black Flag hits, various islands in the carribean.

 

[bojackx]

Only me and my brother really play games, him more than me. My dad has never played a game except for a game of Rock Band which he played once. My mum is hooked on Facebook game Bejeweled right now and has been for like the last year or two, and before that it was Beehive Bedlam on Sky TV.

In regards to watching me play, my Grandma found Killing Floor and the mission in MW2 where you kill all those innocent people in the airport to be quite distasteful. My mum thought Mass Effect 2 looked like a film, which I guess was surprising in its own way.

 

[jurnag12]

My dad walked in after I started playing Dragon Age: Origins for the first time.

Dad: "That the game you just got?"
Me: "Yup"

He watches me play through the first bit of the Mage Origin after the Harrowing bit.

Dad: "The graphics are kinda bad, aren't they?"
Me: "It's not about the graphics! It's about the story, and the gameplay!"

A few moments of silence

Dad: "They still suck."

 

[unbreakable212]

My whole family are gamers, maybe my mum slightly less as she only play's Bejeweled nowadays. But my dad introduced me to games like Quake & Doom, My dad, my sister and I would play quake co-op which could get pretty intense pretty quickly, as I was young (about 12?) and the rocket launcher was my favourite weapon, I just shot on sight which lead to alot of team-killing... I had a knack of killing my dad/sister instead of the fiend/shambler I was supposedly aiming at.

One time we even got my mum to play Quake for a bit, that was hilarious, the zombies terrified her and even with advice she couldn't kill them. Enter me with my rocket launcher and bits of zombies & my mum's character scattered around the room moments later.... good times.

 

[KOMega]

My dad thinks of it as a waste of time. But doesn't act against it outside of the throwaway comment.
My mom sometimes says that a game's graphics are pretty. But that's the most I've ever heard from her on the subject.

She requested that I put Pac-man on her computer and she plays that almost constantly for some reason.
She insists it's not because she likes it but because she wants to get better hand-eye coordination. Or something like that.

 

[Jakub324]

My mum said Minecraft looked fun and she's interested enough in Mass Effect to be able several characters by name, although she says both look too complex for her. She used to play Theme Hospital and Age of Empires, though.

 

[2HF]

Not exactly my parent but a father figure of mine...

He was opposed to any video game more advanced than Tetris as he had played it and some ColecoVision games back in the day. One day I sat him down to play an NCAA basketball game (he's a huge college basketball fan). He miraculously picked up the "complicated" controls and was soon holding his own in head to head matches. It wasn't long before he was creating himself in game (with perfect stats, just btw) and placing himself on the Kentucky Wildcats roster (his favorite team). We even convinced some coworkers (he was my manager at my first job) that he was included in the game on one of the old timey teams that sports games sometimes include.

He also picked up the Tiger Woods games in a snap. Wasn't long before he was sinking eagle shots from 100 yards out. Pissed me the fuck off.