Gaming with family

Slight spoilers for The Last of Us will follow, so please beware!

My mom and I are best friends, always have been. We have the kind of mother/son relationship that is just fun and open, like friends. The only thing she really never cared for is video games, she was just never interested in them.

But I know what kinds of stuff she likes to watch, like stuff that is emotional especially, and so I just had the idea to sit her down and start up The Last of Us for her and play it. I explained that it's very movie like, very emotional and tense etc. And she agreed to give it a shot.

So at the time of this writing on March 8th, we just finished up about 2 hours worth, right up to where we meet Ellie and are tasked with smuggling her out of the city for Marlene. And her thoughts so far were that she liked it and wants to see where it goes from there! I had a lot of fun playing it for her, and hearing her react behind me to things like Joel bashing people's head into the curb which she hated hahaha.

It's also really funny having to explain to her why I keep getting shot but not dying, or how the enemies can't hear me when I'm choking out their partners right next to them haha. She is very unfamiliar with video games, so I have to try hard to explain these things, that you have to sort of turn off your disbelief and real world knowledge for the sake of the experience. It's a lot harder than it sounds to do this though XD But after a few enemy encounters I think she got the hang of it.

Though she did say that the encounters do feel kind of the same every time, like sneaking around, choking, shooting, then moving on etc. I told her yea, that's kind of how story based video games generally work so you sort of need to persist until the next meaty piece of story comes along. But plot wise I think she is getting more and more interested as it goes on.

She's already piecing together how Joel and Ellie may evolve later in the game based on what happens with Sarah in the beginning so I'm glad she sees that. Had lots of fun doing this, and I'm hoping we can continue in the coming days and eventually get through the game.

What about you guys? Do you have any stories of introducing a game or 2 to family and friends who are VERY unfamiliar with video games?

[lex-1020]

I once had a girlfriend who liked to watch story driven games like MGS, Uncharted, and Heavy Rain. She couldn't play but she enjoyed watching. We even recorded a few livestreams from it.

We broke up and my wife doesn't play video games. It's a bummer.