Since I’m a lazy slug that enjoys sleeping in on the weekends, I usually wake up to the sound of my kids arguing over how they need to be quiet or they will wake me up. Yes, the irony in that is totally lost on them.

For the most part, I end up sleeping late on the weekends because I gamed late into the night before.  I’m a natural born night owl and I have had to change sleep patterns to fit my elementary school work schedule. On the weekends and vacations, though, all bets are off. To compound this problem, living with two teenagers means the TV and the consoles are monopolized during the day so, really, nights are my only chance to get my game on in peace and quiet.

I know, the title of this column would suggest that I game with my kids all the time and, if I didn’t, it might just rip the fabric of out little family apart. Not so. There are several interesting interpersonal dynamics I’ve noticed that occur whenever a video game is fired up in our house, some of which I’m not exactly proud.

Co-operative Play

This is probably one of my favorites, one that I would tout as the second best reason for parents to game with their kids (the very best being so that you can know what your kids are doing, but I think I covered that in my last column).

Now, I realize many games are set up with co-op play but this goes beyond a game design element. This is when I log into Animal Crossing to visit our crazy little town and find my mailbox stuffed with notes from my usually emotionally reserved 12 year old daughter. Suddenly, the kid that won’t tell me how her day at school was sends me notes telling me that something I might like is on sale at Nookway or that her gyroid is saving a cool outfit for me. Sometimes, she’ll send a sweet note with a gift attached, something I had been wanting for a collection, or she sends a joke she heard at school or just a note to say HI with silly faces and hearts all over it.

Ok, I know it’s just a game and some of the stuff she sends me is just crap she picked up and was storing in her overfull basement but I look beyond that and think of the process she had to go through.

First, she had to take the time to think of me and whether or not I might like the crap. That’s really not so hard for her to think of me in the game since my house is right next door to hers but still, she’s a teenager. Thinking of others is not high on her priority list.

The second step is that she has to write me a note to attach the gift to. Now, she could do what we do to send things to the museum and send empty note paper but she always writes something funny or silly, something that will make me laugh. She also enjoys setting up multiple gifts so that the surprise and enjoyment builds up. Sometimes I’ll just get a note, no present, which tells me that she was thinking of me that day, which means quite a lot coming from her. Those notes I save.   

Another example of co-operative play is when my sullen 14 year old son actually has to admit that he can’t beat a game alone and he needs help from his sister or, even worse, his MOM. The first few Spyro games were very frustrating for him because he could not win Hunter’s challenges. After a while he noticed they were my specialty so, when he got too frustrated and could not move on, he asked me to do them for him. His appreciation is genuine and I get a few “Cool Mom” points.

Sometimes, my son just gets bored of playing games alone and asks one of us to play a 2 person game with him. This from the boy that goes straight to his room and shuts the door as soon as he gets home, not coming out until he smells food, is a major occurrence. I have to admit, it’s pretty cool to hear my kids laughing together as they knock the snot out of their opponents in Super Smash Brothers Melee.

My favorite co-operative game to play with my son, though, is Crash Bash. We have certain events where we are just unbeatable as a team in and we enjoy the heck out of. The way we work together is neat. He can tell when I’m getting frustrated so he’ll move to my favorite arena until my confidence is back then we move in for the kill.

This doesn’t happen as often as I would like. With my son, it’s usually more of the next dynamic.

Competitive Play

Anyone that tells you that I am not a competitive person is a liar.  Sure, I may seem to be all about teaching and cooperation and growth but put a controller in my hand and I’m ruthless. I’m not proud of it but there it is.

I first noticed it when we got our first racing game. You may never have even heard of it. A nifty little footrace game called Running Wild for the PS.  You run on various tracks as a bi-pedal animal either against CPU characters or, and this is wher ethe fun really starts, against each other. I had no idea how good it would feel to come in first against my son or, even better, run him over and stomp him into the ground when I got a Giant power up or cut him off when I got a Speed power up. Oh, and let me get a Mud Bomb and it is all over.

We play the game differently, though, my son and I. I usually find a player that I like and stick with it, preferring to become a better racer through practice. I soon found out that my son likes to skew as many variables as he can to gain an advantage, especially when he notices I’m improving. If I begin winning too many races, he’ll either change the course we are running or he’ll change his character. I usually don’t say anything (because, frankly, I can beat him on any course with any character, any time. BRING IT, SON!), but when he starts switching to Boss characters that are outrageously fast, I realize that maybe I should let him win a few and call it a day.

Another aspect of competitiveness in my house is to see who can get the most completed in our games. You win bragging rights when you get to see the credits first. The way we go about getting there is different, though. Usually, when we get a new game, my kids like to sit back and watch me play first. Yes, that is the rule; we get a new game, Mom goes first. They watch the cut scenes and learn the controls while I am playing and then, when my back is turned, the little buggers take over and finish before me.

Now, it usually doesn’t bother me too much, or at least I try not to show them I’m aggravated, but depending on how important the game is to me, I sometimes will deliberately not play it in front of them at all. Metroid taught me that valuable lesson. I cracked the seal on it and got frustrated one afternoon. Later I casually complained to my son that it was frustratingly hard and that it might take a bit for me to go through it. Big mistake.

Where before there was a distinct lack of interest in playing as a girl, my admission of weakness was all it took for him to want to play. The next thing I know, he is playing through it, borrowing guides from his friends, and basically spoiling the game for me. I’ve seen every boss and how to beat it, I know all the traps and yet I’ll probably never play it now. Yes, I know, it’s childish of me but I don’t care. Unlike him, I don’t like the secrets spoiled for me. I don’t want a walkthrough to tell me how many steps to take before turning left. I want to beat a game on my own merit or it’s not nearly as satisfying.

Yes, while some aspects of our competitive family make me less proud than others, the next dynamic is a relatively new one for us.

Parallel Play

Since I’m traditionally the last to rise on the weekends, I’m usually relegated to sit and watch my kids play while I sit bleary eyed on the couch and wait for my coffee to brew. This weekend, my son played Metroid Prime on the ‘Cube while my daughter played Bejeweled on my PC. Once I got my cup of coffee and began waking up, I got the urge to start playing too but I didn’t really want to kick either of them off of their games to do it. The morning was so peaceful and, since they were actually not fighting, I decided to keep everything copacetic and come up with an alternate solution.

I pulled out my laptop and played along. I launched Warning Forever, that nifty little free game Zak posted about a few months ago. I love the simplicity of the gameplay, the increasingly challenging levels, the blaring audio (which I have to turn way down when I’m playing on my lunch hour at school), and I especially love the satisfying explosions. It’s the type of game I can launch when I have a few extra minutes because, honestly, I usually don’t last much longer than 5 minutes or so before I explode. But I digress …

I was saying that this weekend I wasn’t actually playing with them, I was playing near them. This created an interesting interplay, one that I hadn’t noticed before. We each were lost in our own little worlds but not so lost that we couldn’t pause to congratulate or commiserate one another’s respective victory or defeat. 

I even watch my son playing Metroid without getting too mad, probably because he was up against a very tough boss and I was playing something he hasn’t yet. When he asked me for help, I suggested he try something different and, to our surprise, it worked! This made him very happy and I got good gaming karma points that, hopefully, will counteract all the bad things I’ve thought about him over the past few months while he’s played “my game”.

I think the key to the peaceful coexistence here was that none of us was TOO interested in what the others were doing. We were each playing what we wanted to play but not so interested that we hovered and hinted.

This, naturally, brings me to our last dynamic, my specialty …

Rogue Play

Last month, Tim bought me a new game. This is a very special game to me, one that I have not let the kids play at all yet. He bought me Cubivore and, while I let him play it a bit when we first got it (funny how there is not as much competition there), I put it away so that no one would play it but me. It was Mine, all Mine, you understand! Go, go, go! Mine, mine, MINE!   BWahahahaa!!

Oh, sorry, slipped into a little Daffy Duck there. *ahem*

That is honestly how I felt about it though. Drooling, obsessive greed. I wanted to play this game, I wanted to play it alone and, most importantly, I wanted to beat it first. I was the same way with Katamari Damacy, We <3 Katamari and Chibi Robo. Maybe the key with all of them is that Tim bought them for me but I don’t think so. I think it has something to do with keeping something for myself.

For the past month, I have only played Cubivore either late at night or early in the morning, with no kids around. I don’t know about you but I enjoy my gaming experience much more when I can immerse myself in the experience, which is very hard to do when I have a 14 year old trash talking me in the background.

Ok, maybe he doesn’t exactly trash talk but his running monologue in the background is disconcerting. One minute he is telling me to look out for something coming up behind me and the next he’s telling me how to beat a boss or that I’m doing a move wrong. While he thinks he is helping me, he is really stressing me out so much or, worse, confusing me so much that I end up throwing down the controller in disgust.

He doesn’t realize how much concentration it takes for my 42 year old ADD brain to stay focused enough to play well.  In all honesty, I’m not even sure he knows he does it as much as he does. After all, I’ve watched him play with his friends and they all talk constantly when they play together.

Maybe it’s really just a plot to make me so frustrated that I’ll quit and let him have the controller. Usually, if I’m being childish and stubborn, it makes me dig in my heels and continue to play long past wanting to, just to prove to him that he can’t force me off, which really defeats my purpose in gaming as a way to let off steam.

So I have become a rogue gamer. Sometimes, I’ll actually wake up before them and grab the chance to do some early morning gaming. Usually, though, I play under the cover of night. This allows me to enjoy my gaming experience without the background chatter, the constant interruptions, the snack requests and the unsolicited advice.

It also gives me an advantage over my son, the advantage of lots of extra practice, something that I’m not ashamed to admit that I need if I want to whoop his butt. After all, isn’t that what being a family is all about?

Thanks to Gamespot for the screenies ... really, isn't it all about being the biggest monkey?

In the next Digital Sandbox ... next gen family gaming!

Until then, play nice!