There is a fantastic article that you need to read about a gamer encouraging his mother to try out the X-Box 360 and various games for the console. It is a rather lengthy read, but the entire thing is definitely worth the time! As is extremely rare in the online news market, this is a piece of extremely well written and composed journalism, and it was actually a pleasure for me to read through, which is obviously a great aspect to have in any written work. You can read the whole thing here, and again I strongly encourage you to do so.
Some of the highlights of the article are that they provide a good perspective into the viewpoint of the mother, and how she is very artistically interested in videogames. In the end it seems that the largest inhibitor of her regular enjoyment of the games was the human-controller-game interface and that, as an inexperienced game player, she had to re-learn a new control scheme for each game. There are several quick pages about a few of the games that she played, with commentary from her son, that provides a nice duality to the experiment. The part about Oblivion shared a lot of the same sentiments we had: the control scheme can get a bit wacky, the menus can suck you in for months out of a year, that the use-based skill system makes things a lot easier, and how simply beautiful the game is in both aesthetics and immersion.
Also there is an implied shot at the PS3, as she talks for a few paragraphs about how the Wii controller is extremely innovative, a great idea, and then how she knows abosultely nothing about the PS3. The article also ends with a good note as to how game (specifically console) developers can hope to better attract older gamers to their systems and promote interaction between children and parents while playing games. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Thanks to Zen of Design for pointing the way to this article.
I remember when my family first got a SNES, and our first game was Super Mario World. My father played the game quite a bit (and was much better than myself or my little sister). However, what I REALLY remember fondly is my mother playing a few levels. This only happened once or twice, but it really speaks to the timeless appeal of the character. One night, when I had gone to bed, she came in and woke us up to tell us Dad had beaten the first boss! If that initial curiosity is there in even my mom, surely it can be harnessed somehow.
Both my parents were big Atari players, but then when I got my NES, it was like a whole other world. My mom describes her one attempt at playing Super Mario Bros. like this:
“I pressed a button, and Mario opened up a bottle of Valium and downed the whole thing.”
I can’t imagine my parents playing video games, but that would be awesome.
My dad started buying us systems and games (randomly, I think) when we were kids, but he never actually tried them from what I remember. I’ll have to ask him sometime. My mother wouldn’t touch the things, she hated seeing me playing a game for more than a half hour at a time.