How do you convince someone you love that games are a good thing?

On April 1st I'm going to move in with my beautiful, intelligent girlfriend, who hates games with a passion. It's not much that she hates the games themselves, it's more the way they are such a major part of my life - I'm trying pretty hard to get into games journalism and I wrote my dissertation on Half-Life.

But the element she has biggest issue with - and I see her point - is that I basically spend my whole day at work staring at a screen, and then I come home and relax by staring at a rather similar screen. I could be out cutting down trees to build a hut and skin a badger and eat it raw. Well, I could be out mountain biking or surfing or indulging in some other rugged sport. I made the point that it's no worse, and probably better than her watching television, but she correctly pointed out that she doesn't watch much anyway.

So after one reasonably big discussion about the nature of games, I came up with the idea of contacting a couple of respected games journalists to see what they thought, and putting the collected musings in this post. Those contacted were Jim Rossignol and Kieron Gillen, and I asked for their opinions and experiences of games and partners.

Jim was the first to respond with: 'I wish I knew the answer. My usual excuse is "well it pays the bills".' Which is great if you've got a job in the industry, but I don't.

Kieron, on the other hand, gave a far more comprehensive and reasoned argument (no offence Jim), explaining that there's a certain tendancy amongst partners in this situation to think of the computer "as the Other Woman;" that is, something you love and your partner doesn't understand why. And whilst this is kind of true, I do love my girlfriend more than games, and I'm always going to have time for her.

Kieron also suggests that I try and get my girlfriend in to games by playing something like singstar or dancemat games. This certainly does sound like an interesting option, but I'm pretty sure my girlfriend wouldn't want yet another console in the house on top of my NES and Dreamcast.

Kieron's best comment, however, was "all you can do is say that you think games are good, and that she really should respect that - and that, in turn, you'll try and give her all the time you want." This is cool, and I totally agree.

So, after a further conversation with my girlfriend, we came to a compromise - knowing how much I love games and want to get into games journalism, we decided that there will be no games in the house until I get a job writing about them. I don't mind missing out on games for a while, I enjoy writing about games almost as much as I enjoy playing them, and this will definitely give me a big push to actually get off my arse and start actually pursuing a career. But this could also mean that I never get to play another game for the rest of my life.

I'd better get writing...

Labels: Feature

posted by Henry @ 3:46 pm