Oh, The Shame...
Like some of you, I'm sure, I have a boyfriend with only a casual interest in gaming. It's not such a bad thing generally, because there's no fighting over the consoles or portables, but there are times when I wish I could play with him more than I do. Sure, he'll sometimes join in on drums for a few songs in Rock Band, but usually, he has no interest in the games I own. Since he's not going to buy himself a game, I'll sometimes buy titles that I think he'll enjoy but in which I only have a passing interest. I mean, I enjoy a round or two of Dr. Mario, but he's obsessed with it, so I downloaded that the instant it hit WiiWare so we could have something to play together. And I only bought Scene It! because I knew he'd be willing to play a quiz game, and I love trivia. But recently I actually took the next step and purchased a game that I would normally never play just because I knew it would make him happy. A game that I would be embarrassed to let someone see on my shelf. I made the ultimate sacrifice and bought High School Musical: Sing It!
I had originally contemplated buying HSM:SI for him last Christmas as a gag gift, but decided $50 was too much to spend for a joke. But when I saw it at a two-day sale at Toys'R'Us for only $20, I caved. It's pretty much what I expected, too. The graphics are merely adequate, the menu interface is almost purposefully counter-intuitive, and obviously I don't know any of the songs. But being a fan of the High School Musical movies, my boyfriend was gleefully singing along and didn't mind the game's host of flaws. And in the end, I was willing to overlook them too, because we were having fun playing a game together. Granted, he outscored me constantly because I don't know the lyrics or the melodies and he made me sing the girl parts that were too high for me, and at one point the ridiculousness of what we were doing forced me to pause the game while I tried to stop laughing. But to me, it's worth the sacrifice of singing along to "Fabulous" or "Get Your Head in the Game" because it's a game we can play together.
I'm sharing my personal shame to inspire others to confess to games they've played simply because their significant others enjoyed them. Did your boyfriend force you to join him on a World of Warcraft quest? Or did he get you into Dance Dance Revolution? And did you resist? Or were you surprised to find how much you actually enjoyed it? Share your shameful gaming secrets in the comments. I promise I won't tell!
Wootini
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 13 November 2008
· Comments (12)
Other stuff like this: boyfriends, high school musical: sing it, multiplayer, musings
Oh, the things we do for love. You're a good man, Wootini.
My fiance and I face a different problem. I play all sorts of games. He only plays World of Warcraft. My attempts and broadening his gaming pallet has failed, and his attempt to get me into WoW resulted in me being bored.
Well, kind of...
I started playing City of Heroes to spend time with a guy I was into. I hoped that spending time playing the MMO together would be better than spending time with him while he played the game alone.
Long story short, it didn't work out.
Yes. I'm still playing City of Heroes. My current character is a lvl 27 scrapper.
I used to, and for the most part still do, hate WOW. But the bf loved it. I refused to play. Every once in a while he'd run through a level or two of Gears. Co-op on Halo. But it's not like we had a lot of options. He couldn't join me in the halls of Rapture. Can't help me fight the B&B corps on MSG4. We couldn't split-screen and do.....what ever it is you do with Linger In Shadows. Plus, I'm not a huge online player so COD4 was out of the question.
So when we moved in together I broke down and started WOW. We'd play side by side on our laptops ( his a mac, mine a pc; still a matter of great disagrement). And we'd play all night. And wihile I didn't particularly love the game it was alot of fun playing together.
We've split now (WOW and I, not the bf) and with games like Little Big Planet it's so much more fun when we play together rather than alone. And I hope to see more games like that on the horizon.
i'd give just about anything to see wootini sing the 'bop bop bop to the top' song
The only game my man is interested in is Tetris. He probably spends at least an hour a day on our laptop playing it. Outside of that, his interest in video games in non-existent and there isn't a game I could buy that would change that I think.
Also, you are a good good good man Wootini for making the sacrifices you have.
Well my boyfriend...
wait..
I don't have one. =(
We used to love playing Bust-A-Groove together on the Playstation. So I figured we could get into Britney's Dance Beat.
I got soo embarrassed when I bought the game and the clerk asked me if I was buying it for myself.
I'm only a gaymer these days because my of my first boyfriend. I confessed to him that I used to play video games and that I LOVED Pokemon and he said, "So get Emerald. And a DS. Don't be ashamed of it." So I asked for it, half jokingly, for my brithday. And my parents got it for me! And now I'm a Nintendo addict.
I started playing WoW so I could spend more time with my (somewhat) long distance boyfriend, and now I am hopelessly addicted.
Split screen games dis-orient my boyfriend when we try to play, but I'm still gonna get Left 4 Dead and hope he'll play it with me.
My boyfriend is Retro Man. Games are only good if they came out on the last generation of consoles, this generation is always crap and the next generation will be "worthless". I've heard this argument trumpeted out for the last 6 years as he buys every iteration of every handheld going.
When Mega Man 9 came out it was fun watching his tortured mind make sense of it.