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0 pointsmikepurvis7y ago0 comments

That's a fascinating turn-around though— I wonder if she considers what she's doing gaming? Basically, there are a lot of extremely high quality single-player narrative games out there, many of which provide a story/explore difficulty level where it's almost impossible to die. Would she still be prejudiced against those, or now that she understands the appeal in broad terms, would she consider upgrading to games that aren't a complete wasteland of F2P nonsense?

FWIW, many public libraries have a small collection of Xbone/PS4 games, so if you got the base hardware, there'd be an opportunity to sample a bunch of things quickly to try different styles and genres.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

AdmiralAsshat7y ago· 1 in thread

I don't think she's really interested in what I or my brothers considered "games". The high-intensity/fast-reflex or long-investment kind of games we would play probably did not appeal to her. She seems to have gravitated towards the casual-gaming stuff, where the end-goal of the game is meandering and there's a great deal of instant gratification ("Congrats! You clicked a button! Have a trophy!")

With that said, I regret in hindsight that I didn't force her to try Animal Crossing back when it came to the Gamecube 15 years ago. It was very much a prototype of the casual gaming trend that's popular now. We might've found some common ground back then before our ages caused role-reversal.

mikepurvisOP7y ago

A lot of modern open-world games incorporate the meandering/gratification loop you're talking about though.

I can't find it now, but there was a heartwarming story on reddit a few months ago about a dad dying of cancer and playing BOTW on a switch in his hospital bed, and bonding with his adult son over it— he never even made it off the Plateau (the initial tutorial section of the game), but was having a ball running around collecting plants, making potions, getting gear, whatever.

Even if the violence level of Assassins Creed or God of War isn't your cup of tea, something like Detroit Become Human or Horizon Zero Dawn could be a good fit.

watwut7y ago

I don't think farmvile translated to interest in narrative game. There is no reason for it to. Whatever appeal of farmvill to her is, it very likely not be found in completely different narrative game.

It is sort of like assuming that someone who likes guitar rock songs would like metal, because both are music.

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