Special Service: A Guide to Living with a Gamer

This article is a bit more personal as it is written as a guide to two lovely ladies who got married to gamers over this past weekend. Now, I’m sure they are accustomed to living with a gamer, but this guide shall help them out during those rough patches. And I will say this guide is written from the point of view of a guy gamer and a female companion in the VERY odd case of a dominant female gamer and a non-gamer male companion, well honestly I’ve never heard of such a thing. So if you are a female who games more than her significant other PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave a comment until then I shall think of you as a unicorn. Special in so many ways, but also doesn’t exist.

1) Co-op only sounds good on paper.

Oh sure it starts off innocently enough, “Oh look honey this game says we can play together!” And then you actually start to play together. He is trying to rush through the game, she is learning the ropes. He is getting frustrated that she won’t speed up, she is mad because he won’t take the time to show her the ropes. It leads to angering and bickering and you really don’t want that, now do you.

And in EXTREME cases (yes I’m looking at you New Super Mario Bros Wii) not only can it ruin relationships, it may also damage friendships and work relationships. There is no good in New Super Mario Bros Wii co-op if you want to keep friends. Now if your friends and loved ones know you are a jerk then go ahead and play it, but we’ve warned you.

2) He will never take it easy.

This one is an old wise’s tale. You assume he would take it easy during your first time at least until you learn the ropes, but let’s be honest gamers are bred from birth to know only winning. We don’t play first person shooters online to see who is the friendliest fellow in the party, we play to make sure we kill them SOBs faster than they kill us. It is a sad, sad fact of life. So yeah he may take it easy until you start whaling on him, and then you will see the nerd side come out. Blind blind NERD rage.

3)”One More Game” never means one more game.

Let’s be honest, if he wanted to turn off the game, he would do it then and now, the “one more game” simply serves as a distraction, hoping she doesn’t know enough about the game to know when one starts and another begins (sorry for giving up trade secrets here, but we have to be honest).

So “one more game” really boils down to how soon until she recognizes this “final” game has been going on for two hours.

4) Hanging Out with the Guys

This one is actually pretty positive. Instead of getting dressed and spending a night out on the town getting drunk, this usually means just walking to the living room and firing up Xbox Live for a few hours. It may be a bit hard to swallow the fact that you are being ignored in your own home at first, but at least you know where he is, and if you want could ruin a good time by just turning off the power switch.

5) Don’t set-up the games near anything of value/breakable

(This is ESPECIALLY important for SOMEONE, they know who they are!) Gamers get mad, as I noted in tip 2, we are born to win and losing is never fun. We all have our ways of dealing with it, some more passive, most aggressively. So for the sake of a happy home, don’t put anything that can be broken/thrown/tossed/punched/damaged near the gaming section. At some point, it will be broken.

6) Accepting Quests/Missions Before Dinner/Going Out/Any Event

This one is fairly simple, just say NO if you have any type of plans within the next hour or so.

“Can I play one game?” NO!

“I just need to go on this raid with friends!” NO!

NO! NO! NO!

If you don’t, it won’t end nice. I’m just saying.

Ladies and gentlemen (who are probably all writing me angry e-mails now for giving up their trade secrets), these are just some core tips to make sure that your home is a happy place for gaming and love.