Now son, you're really telling me a plumber can jump that high?

It all started when my brother received an Xbox360 a few Christmas' ago. Amazing how time has changed: I was still a firm believer in Sony due to my undying love of the PS2...three years later and I'm more strongly Nintendorthodox than ever and a staunch observer of the Mircosoftean Creed. More significantly, my gaming venues have changed.

Generally I've always been an in-my-room gamer. At my house, ten years worth of video game systems surround a single TV. All it takes is the simple yellow and white switcheroo of my beloved two or three-pronged S-Video cables on the front paneling of my 4:3 Quasar and I'm plugged into whatever system I want.


My room and its accumulation, dolled out in Ikea

Our current generation's dependancy on component cables and more intense interfaces made this more complicated (and I love/hate next gen enough for that). My mother and father remodeled our family room and a HD Samsung Widescreen mounted to the wall was part of the deal. So a Wii, Xbox360, and all the other necessary (or unnecessary) peripherals entered the house around the same time. Finally, a large cabinet was built around this messy landfill of wires and speakers. Unless I were to purchase another set of wires, these systems aren't going anywhere. And I'll just purchase an Elite instead (the old one has gone through one red ring of death already and is a generous 20 gigs...crazy good, no?...Exactly, no).

My father has a home dental practice and often retreats to the family room to go through various files or write something up. If I'm home from college (and my PS2 is often left in my dorm away from home), I often find myself in that very same room, enjoying the candy sweetness of HD in a comfy recliner...while my father watches.


Not our actual recliner

He used to just pretend to go through his files, but I figured out soon enough he likes to watch my brother and me play. He genuinely enjoys watching the games! Which, to be honest, is great and I love. He'll also throw a few quips in there that make me laugh...

Over and OVER again until I've heard him say "there's always a haystack!" in Assassin's Creed or, for example, "oh they're fighting real good just standing around" or "she's brushing her hair, that's not fighting!" in Lost Odyssey a thousand times over. Sure I appreciate the sarcastic quips, but I'd rather not have to be continually reminded just how often and how severely I have to suspend my disbelief when playing video games.


I hope there's hay!!!

Nowadays, every member of the family has their own individualized station somewhere in the family room. My father's files clutter the room (we swear files will pour out of the drawers or fly out the pool table paneling), my mother has a craft station and her own personal TV to watch the Yankees (she realized very quickly just how hotly demanded our so-called "big" TV would be), and my brother has his Mac desktop. Actually I take that back. I'm the only family member without a private spot in that family room.

I've always cherished privacy in my life. As I grew up I became far more social indeed, but I've always appreciated a certain need for alone time in one's life...and for me that is often with video games. And these have traditionally been confined to my own room. I've never had any reason to keep any of my belongings anywhere else in the house. Technically speaking, the Xbox360 and Wii would be my privacy within the family room if only that weren't impossible. Until the remodel, I never fully understood how much a video game system enjoys its own privacy either.

I've numbed a bit to this fact of life. The HD experience is too great to pass up when at home, though I do rely on subtitles more than I might like to (I usually always turn subtitles on anyway, but with the traffic that comes through the room, give up any thought of being uninterrupted). I also used to be embarrassed of the games I played. Specifically any JRPG. The first time my Dad entered the room on Lost Odyssey, he loudly exclaimed, "Her boobs are huge!." My mother joined in to laugh alongside him. Now for me, this is just a fact of JRPG gaming - huge, disproportionate boobs, as awfully stereotypical as that may be. But to my parents, they little know the stereotypes or commonalities that make up the JRPG genre. Perhaps not at all (though I assume from watching they have been learning). To my surprise, I found myself laughing along with them, all of us like little kids together. One of the few genuine family moments I've had in my history of gaming. Unfortunately, I couldn't help but think that game was plain dumb for the rest of the day.


b00bs!!! OMGZ U guyzzz! O_o

Sometimes I think my father forgets that I'm old enough to do adult things or that I'm older than ten at all - including that I can see R movies or buy Mature games. Playing Resident Evil 4 on the Wii, I was first met with lots of "woah" or "geez" or "what a nice guy he is" (referring to Salazaar, for instance, or anytime someone commits a kill...which is all the time in that game). After a while, those mellowed out, and he sometimes sat back and watched, provided he hadn't avoided the room altogether that day. I'm not sure he enjoys RE4 as much as other games (then again, neither did I...until I played it for myself).

Yet there has been a shift lately. I first noticed when I was playing Tales of Vesperia, and my father cleverly noted, "Hey, this game is really funny!" Glad you noticed. In response to Star Ocean: The Last Hope, he exhibited some progress in his video game studies and knowledge, pointing out, "so everyone's moving! You mean they aren't just bouncing?" Another good one Dad, also glad you noticed. But hey, at least that's a relevant JRPG comment worth making.

In a way, this has affected what I play. I tend to shy away from games he may not enjoy seeing in passing. He'll even express boredom on occasion. I'm the type of gamer who takes over an hour to create a character in a Bioware game, and starting Dragon Age: Origins, he kept asking, "So, do you get to play the game yet?"

But his curiosities cannot match his recent fascinations with Assassin's Creed II. In fact, both him and my mother will pop a squat on the couch just to see the marvelous Italian locales. He'll point out il Duomo, il ponte vecchio, and all the other locations we've seen in person, and he is positively delighted. He once told me to slow down when I read through a location entry too quickly. Now when he's in the room, I make sure he has ample time to read the history entries.


il Duomo in realita'

I was amazed when I realized that my father now understands entirely how the game operates just from watching here and there. He'll ask who my next target is, what kind of mission I'm doing, he'll recognize the cities I'm in (everyone was in the room when I got to Venezia, and a strange collective gasp and awe filled the family room), he even suggested I'd be better off using poison on a target once, he absolutely could not wait to see my new hammer in action, and he recognizes the members of the family (his favorite is zio Mario).

In fact, now that I have an Elite for myself, I feel bad bringing the game back with me to school. I'm suddenly hesitant to experience the game in his absence. I'd leave it behind and give him subtle hints to play it himself, but anytime we mention he should learn to play a video game, he instinctively responds "too many buttons" or "they're too complicated."

These are words coming from my father, once the Gameboy Tetris and Bomberman master. My mother has shared similar sentiments. She purchased Wii Fit for herself some time ago but has yet to play it. Anytime my brother or I have a college vacation approaching, she always mentions that we need to teach her to play. Our noncommittal response is sadly often, "Just press the button and turn on the system!" We are indeed aware it takes a few more buttons to begin playing a Wii game. I'd still like to think it isn't that complicated...right?


My Dad's favorite game, and he rocked it

But my parents are not the only people I know to express such concerns. More and more, there seem to be people in this world who are contented enough by watching a video game and nothing more. I'd like to think they'd enjoy them more for themselves if they took control. And more times than I can count, people express inability to play due to "complication" or "buttons" or, what's more, "sucking." I once convinced my mother to play Ico and guide her through. It was a lost cause early on, and her frustration and my guidance superseded the gameplay experience entirely. I helped her to when you get to courtyard by the front gate for the first time, but she hasn't played it since. This was actually a very disheartening experience. Ico became something important to me that I could not plausibly share with her.

On the other controller-less hand, it's sort of nice to think I can play Assassin's Creed II and my father finds it as accessible as a movie and join in to watch. Still, I feel like I'm robbing him anytime he isn't in the room to see a part of it, but most of all, because he isn't playing it for himself. In my dreams, I'd like to think he'd finally pick up and play, only then, I will have spoiled much of the game for him.


Dive deeper, dammit

Forget this concept of "casual gaming." Is there anyway to bring all the demographics together over the real meat and potatoes of video games? Family bonding over Cooking Mama is not enough for me. The most artistic, the most ambitious, the finest stories, graphics, gameplay, the fantastically unique games, how can we allow the casual side of the market that likes to window shop alongside my parents and bring them in further? What needs to change before my father decides he'll pick up a controller for himself or is that doomed forever to be an impossibility? Until then, I won't know whether to laugh, scoff, or cry each new time my dad makes another "haystack" comment.

-BGB