WARNING: Long-ass post is long, and hopefully not ass. No pics yet for you TL;DR types, so keep that in
mind.

I am the only gamer in my family. It is a sad truth, but one that I live with. My mother grew up on a farm
without them, and my father sold his SNES before I was born (why?!). My sister... well, she used to fight with
me for the Gameboy (the original, chunky and white) so she could play Super Mario Land and Tetris.
Somewhere along the way, she decided that games were a waste of her time- and now she's planning on a
career in broadcast journalism. God help me if she ends up at Fox News...

So, throughout my childhood and beyond, I have tried my hardest to educate my parents about the variety of
games that exist and the benefits of such. The problem was that although they would smile and nod every
time I ecstatically rambled about the latest game I had picked up, they were (and still are) reluctant to actually
play them with me.

Only a handful of times have I been able to get them to sit down and stick the controller in their hands.
Granted, my choices of games were not always the best; WarioWare, for instance. "It's only two buttons," I
told them. "You'll be fine, as long as you read the directions." Unfortunately, even at its slowest stages, the
game's text zoomed by far too quickly for them to comprehend, and as soon as they put their hands in the
proper position, the challenge was over.

"What happened? What was I supposed to do?"
"Didn't you read the directions?"
"What directions?"

Mario Party was also a disaster. Although my parents were able to move their characters around the board
(though I had to remind them which ones they had picked), the minigames once again frustrated them. The
constantly changing control scheme baffled them, and combined with their issues with their avatars ("Which
one's mine again?"), the games ended in a ludicrous fashion.

However, there is hope. My mother now knows who Jack Thompson is, although she thinks I'm making too
big of a deal out of it. I was able to spend some time with my father on Super Mario Galaxy, trying to help him
as he hopped about on the planetoids. Due to pressure from my relatives, I've been able to get my mother to
play Guitar Hero (even if it was on Easy with the No Fail cheat turned on). I felt like I was making some
genuine progress.

And then came Portal.

It was rather simple, at first; when my parents asked what I wanted for my birthday, I told them I wanted The
Orange Box. Before my parents bought my sister and I a Gameboy, the PC was the major source of our
electronic entertainment. However, we had never owned a high-end computer, leaving me to find enjoyment
in point and click adventure games, from Spy Fox in Dry Cereal all the way up to The Dig and Grim
Fandango. My cousin gave me their old Playstation when they bought a PS2, and I instantly converted to
console gaming.

Jump forward to 2007, where I hear about this new-fangled box Valve is going to release. I had heard a lot of
good things about Half-Life 2, was excited by Team Fortress 2 and its art style (colors! Dear God and
Mudkips, there are colors in this game!), and was deeply intrigued by Portal. About a week after the game
comes out, I decide I need to upgrade my PC just so I can find out what the hell is up with the cake and why
it's a lie.

I seem to have a strange sense of, well, I suppose you could call it karma when it comes to games; I end up
having to give up something else in order to receive it. When I camped out for the Wii in 2005, my cell phone
mysteriously fell out of my pocket as I stepped out of my father's car. As soon as he pulled forward, we both
heard a sickening 'crunch'. It turns out the phone was split cleanly in half by the car, with no hope of repairing
it. After skipping four or five stores jam-packed with people, we ended up at a Toys'R'Us, number twenty-
three in line. There were exactly twenty-five Wiis.

In any case, the gaming gods decided that I was not going to get my Orange Box that easily. After taking the
time out to research a graphics card (I remember you guys giving me some suggestions, back when I was
still new to the forum), we installed the card- and our monitor died. Not just died, but turned an acidic green
and pink, and then died. We've also had to replace our mouse, the speakers, and, strangely enough, our
toilets. All of them.

After much struggling, we finally have order restored to our house. I plowed through Half-Life 2 and the
episodes and tried my best as a Medic on TF2, but kept coming back to Portal. If you haven't played it
through with the Developer's Commentary, I would highly recommend doing so. Hearing the guys at Valve
talk about all of the design tricks they used to make the game work is absolutely fascinating. As I heard them
describe Portal as 'one long tutorial', I began to think to myself: Sure I found it intuitive, but what about
someone else? What about someone who had never played a first-person game before?

And so began the experiment.

The experiment was deceptively simple: Get my family to play Portal. My goal was to observe how a non-
gamer handled a relatively easy and so-called 'intuitive' video game. If Valve was as brilliant as I assumed
they were (and still do), their clever usage of shape, light, and bright yellow tip boxes would be enough to help
anyone- anyone- through one of their games.

I began the experiment with my father, a relatively tech-savvy man. It took me quite a while, though I
eventually convinced him- after all, wouldn't he want to see what he had bought all of that new equipment for?
(Before someone calls me a spoiled rotten child, please know that it was his idea to buy those things for the
family computer, not me.) At last, I managed to get him to play. The following is a rough transcript of what
followed:

"Okay now, to play the game, you need to have one hand on the mouse and one on the W,A,S, and D keys,
like this."

"Okay..." (He puts his hand on the wrong keys. I scoot them over.)

"Okay, the game's loaded up. Your mouse button doesn't do anything yet, you don't need to click."

"All right, then." (Keeps clicking. Stays in the same spot. GLaDDOS' voice comes on)

"Pay attention to her. She's important to the story...You know you can move
around, right?" (My father pushes one of the arrow keys. His character zips off sideways.) "Hey, why don't
you try looking around?"

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Well, don't you want to see where you are?" (My father turns around, looks at the bed, and starts clicking
the mouse button again.) "Dad, the mouse button doesn't do anything yet- you interact with stuff with the E
key."

(GLaDDOS' first clip is done. The portal opens up behind my dad. He doesn't notice it; he's too busy clicking
on the toilet.)

"Hey, dad, did you see that?"

"See what?"

"Well, turn around." (He slowly moves the mouse to rotate the character.) "What's that?"

"It's a portal. You can walk through it."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"...Just do it." (My father begins walking toward the portal. Through the portal, you can see yourself from
outside the containment cell you begin the game in- a neat trick Valve used to get the player to recognize
themselves.) "Hey, stop for a second. Look at that girl there."

"Oh, yeah? Who's that?"

"That's you." (I move her back and forth to prove it.)

"What?"

"That's your character in-game."

"Why do I look like that?"

"Well, you were being held in a containment cell, so-"

"Why am I a girl?"

"Because Valve wanted the player character to be a girl-"

"-I don't wanna be a girl!"

"Too bad."

(My father grumbles, and sidesteps his way into the first puzzle. In this first room, there is a cube of the non-
companion variety, a door, and a button with a big blue line running from it to the door. Another little yellow
box to remind the player that he can pick up objects with the E button. My father walks over to the door and
tries to walk through it. He starts clicking on it in frustration.)

"Dad, you can't just click on stuff. Look, see the little yellow box? You can interact with stuff like this."

"Why isn't the door opening?"


"It's a puzzle, dad. You have to figure out how to open it."

(My dad grumbles again, and notices the big red button. He walks over to it, and steps on it. He hears the
door whoosh open, and turns around. He sees the door open, and begins walking towards it. As soon as he
steps off the switch, the door naturally closes. My dad sits and thinks for a bit, then steps back on the switch.
He tries to run for the door before it closes, but alas, he's not quick enough.)

"Dad, you can't go that way. You'll have to try something else." (I point to the cube.) "Do you see that, over
there?"

"What, the box?"

"Yeah. You could use that for something."

(He walks over to the cube, and starts clicking on it. I sigh, and point to the helpful reminder.)

"Look!"

"...What?"

"You interact with stuff with that button!"

"...Oh."

It took him several tries, but he eventually got the cube on the switch. He completed a couple of the other
levels, but the same conversations repeated themselves over and again. Perhaps it was because he wasn't
really interested in playing the game, but good grief, it was worse than herding cats. Even so, he was able to
get the actual portal gun (but not with the orange portal) with marginally less direction from me; I was so
proud of him! It was then that he decided his lesson was done. With a great yawn, he announced he was
done, and heading off to bed. Nevertheless, I will continue nagging him to try and finish the rest of the game.
He, and my mother as well, will be getting an education on this new art from, whether they like it or not.