If we aren’t controller-swapping a game, we’re usually playing side by side or giving each other recommendations. That said, I think he’s more hardcore than me since he started collecting earlier than me and his knowledge of glitches and pre-release info for some games is a joy to behold.
She did, up until a few years ago but not anymore. Never on par with me, but did play quite a few. Does listen to me when I go on about a game though, and has never once not encouraged my hobby or accepted that my office is full of odd things, as well as me.
My partner played some games when she was younger: The Sims, Rollercoaster Tycoon, stuff like that. Kind of the classic wider audience games from back then.
Since we started dating(very early 2020) she is now more exposed to video games because of me. This hasn’t translated into more interest in the hobby outside of stuff she already had a predisposition toward. Like she’s put hundreds of hours into Sims 4 on the PS5 in the last few years. She generally leans towards games where you have tasks to do and lists to check off. Simulation games, life sim games stuff like that. The one big AAA, modern, controller, TV-ass game she put a lot of time into was the Hogwarts game. It was neat to see her go from not knowing how to play those big open world action games to being an expert in this specific one. It didn’t ignite any kind of passion for the hobby in her or anything, which is fine, I think we’re both totally okay with us having separate passions lol
One thing I did do for her which I’m proud of is I finally made her Animal Crossing dreams come true! When we first were getting to know each other and I mentioned that I liked games and was really excited for the new AC coming out in a few months she said oh, I’ve always really wanted to play one of those but never had a way to. So closer to release I got her a Switch Lite and then the game when it came out. She ended up putting hundreds of hours into it and now likes watching me play the older games in the series as well.
One of the first topics we connected through was video games! She’s especially into PS2-ish third person action games and is a huge fan of a few specific series (namely Tomb Raider, 3D Sonic, Megaman X and American McGee’s Alice). This may be the only household in a couple of kilometers with multiple region copies of Angel of Darkness.
My gf played some cozy games before we were together (Club Penguin, Animal Crossing, Sims) but she got really into them, not just a casual thing. She was super receptive to playing games together so I showed her a lot of the indie highlights, some classics and any coop thing we could find, and we played through them together (mostly me when controls were a problem). We end up playing a lot of story-heavy games and detective stuff because it’s fun to talk about what’s going on in the story etc as it happens, take notes or even do the voice acting in some cases lol. If a game isn’t really collaborative or it’s too complex, such as Dishonored, we will still hang out and I will do a sort of “livestream” talking about what’s going on in the game and what I’m doing, as if I were on twitch or something haha. This is oddly quite a private question! Anyway, we’ve had a good time with it, and she has started playing some indie games by herself as well.
Highlights for me have been: Mario 3D World, It Takes Two, Night In The Woods, Frog Detective, Pentiment, The Yawgh, and Portal.
I made a post a while back asking the forum about 3D games for people who did not play them as children and got some great responses, you might find some helpful stuff there.
my girl has a switch and LOVES the atelier series of games and other lady-forward/yuri type rpgs, as well as pokemons. she gobbled up that harvestella game this past year, and has probably like 89374 atelier carts. i tried to get her into nier automata but that was a little too difficult for her and maybe too Action Video Games but she will crush a jrpg where four lesbians make enough potions that they kill god
My partner not only spends more time playing games than me, but she’s the one who got me hooked on Genshin gacha trash. She plays new stuff from time to time but has a handful that she regularly comes back to.
My partner was playing games long before we met, and we went to the short lived Sega-branded Time Out arcade (rip) at Golden Ring Mall (also rip) near Baltimore on one of our first dates!
Growing up my partner played Alex Kidd, Spyro and she kicked my ass at Muppet Race Mania. Her PS2 gaming consists of The Sims 2: Castaway and Singstar and hadn’t gamed since then until we dated apart from board games.
I don’t think I’ve ever won a game of Jaipur against her.
Now she games with me sometimes, we play co-op such as Kirby, Streets or Rage, Super Mario 3D World. Competitive titles include Dr Mario 64, Puyo Puyo Tetris or Money Puzzle Exchanger. Some solo, A Short Hike and would like to play Stray.
Sorry I should have added an option for Club Penguin that shit is hard
Great minds think alike! I suggested Pentiment a while back and she started playing it over Christmas. I don’t think it’s got its hooks in quite in the way Disco did but she seems to be enjoying it for the most part.
my partner doesn’t game (she does enjoy puzzles and board games) but she really enjoys when I set up some video games for parties we throw. She did play crazy taxi and ssx tricky as a kid so I set that up when her sister’s came over and they all had a blast.
I recently started seeing somebody who lightly plays games. She mostly plays cozy and casual games like Stardew Valley or Donut County. She’ll occasionally get into a big RPG like Baldur’s Gate 3. We have some games on a list we’ll try to play together but we’ve been on a movie marathon and haven’t got around to playing any together.
Not at all, doesn’t get it. Then randomly asked me if I knew about Leisure Suit Larry (lol) and said she wanted to play it. So we sat down one day and completed it in one sitting.
I tried to parlay that into Monkey Island but… no dice.
Have you tried… Escape from Monkey Island?
She plays games, but she’s not a total gamer about it like me. She has her favorites and has played games regularly since she was a kid. She has been waaaay into the Mass Effect series since that came out before we started dating and it’s kinda her thing.
She also really likes watching me play story-driven single player games. Sometimes if I don’t know what to play, I’ll ask her what she feels like watching.
The one that surprised me the most that she likes to watch is the Yakuza series. She’s generally not as much of a weaboo as me so I didn’t think she be into a game as Japanese as that, but she loves it and has watched me play through every single entry.
On our first date my girlfriend spotted my red gameboy with pokemon red edition next to it. She exclaimed「なつかしい!」(How nostlagic!), took it, looked at it intently in the manner a polite Japanese business man inspects another person’s business card and put it away, never to speak of it again.
At another occasion I showed her rudiments of a Godot project I had lying around. You could basically just walk around a small 3D space, see some 2D sprites I made floating in the air and one funny looking 3D model I made. She was impressed in the way a person is impressed when shown something they have really no frame of reference for and therefore can’t even imagine how one would go about making such a thing.
Other than that video games for her are something her sisters’ children play at family gatherings.
I don’t mind at all. Games have always been a hobby I explored more or less in isolation - ignoring the occasional casual FIFA match or odd outlier games which a friend took interest in. Which is why I enjoy the podcast and this forum so much: They compensate for a lack of IRL people to talk about this stuff with.
Since we can currently only see each other every other weekend or so our couple-time is limited enough to focus on things we both equally enjoy so i haven’t explored further. We tentatively spoke about her moving in with me. So there might be future opportunities to explore what games she likes to spectate - if any. But for now girlfriend time means no gaming time.
My partner only plays 3 games semi regularly: Rhythm Heaven, Animal Crossing New Leaf and Happy Home Designer, all on her blue 3ds xl. And there was a brief little time where we played Pokemon Sun and Moon together when they came out. But most interestingly for this crowd, her favorite game from childhood is Atlus’ own Snowboard Kids 2 on n64. Other than that, my game playing is just for me and she’s got her own stuff going on. We support each other’s solo hobbies because the middle section of our venn diagram has plenty of stuff in it.
My wife is an odd one, in that she doesn’t really play games at all but tends to follow specific releases and asks me to play them so she can watch. Her latest one is Showa American Story, so I guess I’ll be picking that up later in the year.
dude I have never heard of showa American story before now and it looks and sounds awesome