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...at gaming.

Seriously, it breaks my heart! My GF wants to play so much, and she's so shit at handling any little crap game that I almost get ulcers. I gave a Wii to my mother last Christmas, and mom beats her at games fer cryinoutloud!

Me and my GF play Kirbi's Epic Yarn now, which is perfect for her girly girl's tastes all pink and cloth and handicraft etc, and even in the introductory levels I have to help her get past basic sections because she can't handle a d-pad and two action buttons. She cries and thinks everything is too difficult. We played Mario Kart with some friends, which she was super hyped about, and she always ended last. She tried Mario Galaxy and couldn't manage the tutorials.

What do I do? Is there treatment homes you can send people with game control deficiency? Does anyone want to trade her for a trained poodle, gerbil or single cell organism or something that might be a better gaming partner?

Perhaps I should have posted this in the manhugs thread instead... COMFORT ME DAMNIT!

edit: spelling.

.

Dude if she's crying, that's probably a sign you should not try to force her to enjoy it.  And besides that, if you are really judging the relationship on how well she performs at your hobby, you're not showing any love for her or who she is, but just redirected narcissism.  Which is going to set you up for failure.

LOL I CANT READ

He said his girlfriend wants to play badly, though.

Also, I think he's trying to be funny with his sarcasm.

So maybe action games aren't her thing. What about, say, RPGs and strategy games? Maybe even some non-timed puzzle games? With those you usually have a near-infinite time window to input the correct action, and it'll still give her experience with a traditional controller.

Mikademus y u so funny

Way to misread me dude :handthumbsupR: Inanimate got it.

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Noah!, yeah, that might be it. Since I don't want to pressure her I have let her select all the games and she basically only knows Mario, which her friends play so she want to play those too, but perhaps I should find some games without the stress factor. Any suggestions? I doubt she'll manage Zelda (though Skyward Sword might be... eh, handleable).

I really don't like your attitude but Animal Crossing is right up her alley.

I think Chocobo's Dungeon would be a really good fit. It's adorable, it's a turn-based dungeon-crawler RPG, and it's REALLY GOOD.

Hurrr, my bad.  Also if she really wants to play games, try anything turn-based.  That'll get the basics of navigation (e.g. overworld) and familiarity with the controller.

why would anyone date the person that wrote that op

did her dad beat her?

Atnas, the attitude is for the forum only, not for the homestead: just a coping mechanism. But Animal Crossing -- good thinking there, worth a try!

Sinclair, ok, will check out Chocobo's Dungeon, thanks for the tip!

J.R, np, relationships are serious things, and it is good that you react when people seems to be disrespectful in them :-*:handthumbsupR: My problem with turn-based is that it is one of my favourite modes since decades, so I'm afraid anything I pick out as simple would be incredibly boring or horrible overcomplicated for her.

Thanks but that was Inanimate.

^ Argh, note to myself: type more carefully. Inanimate, thanks for the Chocobo's Dungeon tip! Sinclair, thanks for being you! :noir::toastR:

... :(

Ok ok, Inanimate, I will give you many more emoticons than Sinclair:
 :gentleman::brofistR::brofistL::-* :toastL::ninja::toastR:  :handanykey::wizard::handjoystick:

Are we good again?

I like the knuckle-touch.

Also Zelda II is the perfect game for her >:D

First girl'd problems.

Well, you can always tell her to suck on something else. :b

But really, finding one's inner gamer takes a bit of exploration. Try different types of games, different eras of games. In fact, find out the kinds of things she's good at doing IRL, whether she's more a co-op/competitive/solo player, and then think of skillsets that complement that.

If it's just hand-eye coordination, I'd recommend starting with rhythm/music games to get her reflexes up, and move from there.

warrior ware series?

How come I get called out for saying stuff like this jokingly but nobody ever calls baconman on being authentically creepy?

:( M.

Could be because I didn't just trollpost, I followed that up with actually pertinent discussion. But yeah, that was kinda tasteless. And so horribly cliche, too!

I shoulda said give her some examples on how to do so better.

This is possibly a super strange, just me thing but I remember when I was little and controllers where hard for me to use game boy games where much easier (they are also usually pretty simple which helps).

I have no clue why though, possibly something to do with being able to look at the controller and the screen at the same time?

With that in mind I would recommend Wario land 1-4.  They are all super fun mario like games and as far as I remember in most of them you can't really die, which would be a big plus for someone bad at games.

I loved Wario Land. I forgot which game it was, but I really liked getting in the bubble and floating to the top.

no if it were you it'd involve rape somehow -- like "if she can't rape opponents in games, have her rape them in real life!" :p

anyway my gf is not interested in playing games (except my games, and games like bejewelled) but i don't really care, different people have different hobbies, i don't like listening to clay aiken either, or going to parks and taking pictures of flowers, the way she does. (but i doubt mikademus was being serious anyway, the post seemed to be said humorously)

kirby's epic yarn probably isn't a good start though. what matters isn't the cuteness factor but the complexity of controlling an avatar which is confusing to people new to gaming; games that have simpler controls (mouse-only, often just using a single button on that mouse) seem to work better for people new to games; big fish games has made a fortune on that principle

Maybe some old adventure games? Those have simple control schemes and charming audiovisuals in addition to being well designed and all. Or fairly simple strategy games, like Fire Emblem (the US-titled one for the GBA, it even has an entire tutorial campaign before the "real" one which I still thought managed to be decently fun anyway (probably helps that it was also my introduction to the series and the SRPG genre as well.)) Or even Sonic, if you want an easy action game, but IDK if that might be too much for her at this stage or something.

EDIT: So I guess the OP also resolves the "can games make you cry" debate then? :D

i think part of the problem is that a lot of women underestimate their own ability to solve challenges. i remember teegee told me about an informal study he did where he showed the same casual but complicated-looking game to a group of men and women and found that they were equally able to solve the game's challenges when they attempted those challenges, but that women rated their ability to solve the game's challenges (prior to attempting them) much lower than the men did, believing that the game will be too hard for them ahead of time

i imagine the reverse would be true if you were teaching men and women singing or dancing or something; on average men would probably believe it to be harder than it actually is for them to learn to sing and dance

so perhaps it's just a confidence issue

i like that, Paul. Did Teegee give you the link? i would like to read that tho.

It was based on my own experience with beta testing the casual games I worked on.

The game in question was an adventure/HO mix with various logic puzzles. Girls tended to skip them, especially those more complex or based on maths and spacial planning (or even looking like if they are based on those things). They said it's way too complex or hard for them to solve. Guys just went through the puzzles in few minutes. Women asked to solve the puzzle just clicked randomly for a few seconds and said: "See? It's too hard". After encouraging women to actually sit and solve the puzzle, they did it in few seconds. Faster than boys even.

y r u w/ a gurl who likes pinky pinky pinky n cries when she 2 dum 2 play da gaem lol dude u shud srlsy find urself anutha partner rofl

have sex with neckbeards

gald i could hekp,
--steve 6obs ghost

@TeeGee
it's kinda hard to understand why they always refuse to try when it come to vgame, most of my female friend does that. maybe it's somekind of stereotype thinking that game are for man. thank for that, might need it to slap it into their face.

back to topic.

Try Dark Souls >:D Or maybe just Pokemon...

What do you think of Super Monkey Ball? It is easy for me, and IIRC it is most about tilting the control. Would it be difficult for someone with very low game controller experience?

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Not in public, I can't! Can I? O.o
We played DDR with some friends. It wasn't a pretty sight. But she had lots of fun, so I could go with that as a point of origin. Then I need to get some mats though X-(

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I hadn't considered the Wario games, so WarioWare and Wario Land are great tips! Two more candidates to check out! Thanks!
Dustin, you might be on to something there! She has very little problems playing the PSP, and there you see the game and the controls at the same time, too! Hmm, that makes me worry about the fact that she wants to get a drivers licence.

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Well, at least they could have a great time together photographing flowers while we could play some games together ;)
I thought Kirby had it all: cuteness and easy controls. But watching her play it I see that the combination controls (f.i. jumping + pressing down turns Kirby into a weight that crushes things; holding the attack as opposed to just pressing it makes Kirby grab things instead of just smashing them) ups the control complexity enormously for newbies. That might actually be worth a design thread of its own.
There is certainly a confidence issue involved. I try to be patient and encouraging, but she focuses on her own failures. Hmm, perhaps I'll try some operant conditioning and reinforce her self-esteem by feeding her tasties when she shows good spirit! ;)

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Indeed! Unintended side effect of my post, but I claim it as a feature, not a bug!
Interesting idea! I can try a few adventure games on her! Sonic I fear might be too tough, though. I'll look up Fire Emblem: I could always see it as an experiment since I'm currently trying to make a strategy game that would appeal at least somewhat to women too.

Not really. Women I talk about are seasoned casual gamers. Ranging from teenagers to grannies, playing multiple similar games every week, each for several hours. Seriously, these "casual" girls are more hardcore than most of the hardcore gamers. So it's a more general problem. It's not: "I can't solve it because I'm not a gamer", it's: "I can't solve it because I'm a woman".

I've been recently reminded of this problem, when my mom played the game in question (http://phantasmat.com/). She is completely and utterly in love with it, and she completed it more than 5 times already ( :wtf:).
So I asked her how she likes different aspects of the game, did she had any problems with the puzzles and such. She says she loves them, but never could solve the bottle puzzle (an old one - find a way to measure 4 gallons with two bottles: 3 gallon and 5 gallon). I asked if it's really that hard that she couldn't solve it on any of her multiple playthroughs? She says that definitely, even though she never even tried it, she just skips it when she gets to it. Her explanation: "You know, I'm not good at these complex math problems, but I'm very perceptive, so I'm good at finding those hidden objects on the screen."

So basically, she just repeated the male stereotype on woman thinking.

Damn, I need to write a blog post about my experiences with female gamers and casual gamers in general. It's a different world, I tell you.

my mother is going to community college currently and she tends to not attempt hard looking math problems on homework, instead asking me how to do them (it's a basic algebra class). to be fair though it's been so long since i took algebra that i can't even remember how to do some of them (like those 'age problems' where it's like 'sally is twice jane's age, and a year ago sally was half of jane's age, what are their ages??'). but even when i don't know how to do it i don't feel intimidated by the question, i just look it up online (how that type of question is done i mean)

This thread might have the highest concentration of internet I have ever seen

There's always Minecraft; walk around, jump, mine, run. Not that complex, and if your GF likes creating things, should be right up her alley. Might want to start with creative or peaceful though.

minecraft's crafting system is very complex -- not just for people new to gaming, but for gamers in general who are only casual fans of the game. you need to memorize formulas etc.

also the first time you play minecraft you are probably going to die from monsters at night cause you don't know that you are supposed to build a shelter to avoid them -- the game never tells you that or even hints that monsters exist in the world, until it's too late

Sim Town? Nintendogs? the kind of games that you don't need to be good at. Wii Sports? Oh man, I'm recommending Wii Sports.

On a related note - trying to make your GF decent at any fighter (even Smash Bros.) is just hopeless. You can try for years, see her learn and get better (VERY) slowly, only to see her get defeated by a complete (male) newbie because she got too nervous and played awfully.

And then you have to tell her it was okay, she'll do better next time, etc.

My gf plays way much more than me. Currently she plays ~4h tower defense games per day while watching tv. When she is not on pc she plays nds games (I think she knows nearly all german or english localized nds rpgs and played through much of them). A while ago she was also addicted to wow... Well, be careful what you wish for ;)

Gateway drugs: Farmville & Co, Plants vs Zombies, adventures like Ankh, nds games in general, puzzle quest and similar stuff, time management games like cake mania, ios games like tiny tower, wow...

ps be careful that you don't suffer from the "girlfriend syndrome" (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/08/the-soapbox-diagnosing-and-understanding-girlfriend-syndrome/) and similar issues.

Don't do the tricky bits of games for your gf. You're not helping, you're 'enabling'!  :lol:

I would find some indie games which have platforming but no death. Or play something like Sonic or Sonic 2. Even though they're faster than most platformers, you can trust the levels to not kill you in a stupid way (for the most part).

Rm88~, I've seen the horrors that comes from trying to get one's GF to play fighters, and I totally agree: it's Picasso's Guernica, Terra Prohibita, Caveat Emptor.

Chromanoid, thanks for the link about girlfriend syndrome, I'll lobby the APA to include it in DSM-V. Though we aren't playing mmoprgs it is a good warning nonetheless, I see it as an easy trap for both to fall into.

bento, totally! You might be joking with the 'enabling', but it is true! I've stopped doing that and instead try to encourage her that she is getting better and can do it. And yesterday she cleared the first two worlds--that's some 12 maps--of Kirby's Epic Yarn by herself! :handshakeL::gomez::handmetalR:

be careful, encouraging leads to extrinsic motivation, which will lead to something similar like the girlfriend syndrome. if she doesn't play it alone for her own enjoyment it's probably not a game for her. btw jump'n runs and similar button action oriented games are imo no good starters for gaming newbees.

I worked around it.
"Pick this red haired Hworang guy. Now mash X."

Force her to play some sort of super twitchy FPS, Quake Live maybe?

It won't help unless she does it a while but it'll be hilarious to watch.

We should make a youtube channel about girlfriends trying to play games. It will be the new lolcats.

Get her into Espgaluda too while you're at it.


No solution (unless you allow for negative ages, so that one year ago Sally and Jane were both negative ages.)

Well you can do such a channel with boys who don't like to play videogames, too ;).
http://www.youtube.com/user/GirlOnDuty coincidence?

My girlfriend plays games all the time. I almost never do. Why are you all treating this like some kind of phenomenon?

Generation gap, son.

My little sister isn't that much of a gamer, plays mostly minecraft and stuff like that. But in some fighting games she's really scary. You do not want to face her in SF4 when she plays with Juri. It's like magic; weird combos and near flawless rushdown playstyle.

some girls actually love to play fast shooters such as Unreal Tournament, they get almost hysterical.

yeah the lan parties i visited in the 00s always had a few girls with fps abilities on par or superior to me :) just fking socialization and maledom is in the way - fun is for everbody, the gender gap regarding leisure time mentioned on wikipedia is ugly "Men generally have more leisure time than women. In Europe and the United States, adult men usually have between one and nine hours more leisure time than women do each week. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure#Gender_gap)[4] (http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/548724153767)" ...

This is without the "second shift," right?

http://lysander.sourceoecd.org/vl=14659669/cl=25/nw=1/rpsv/societyataglance2009/02/06/index.htm seems to be the full article, i think so, but w/o "personal care time" too. i would like to know if "personal care time" is stuff like shaving and makeup and if the majority would consider their "personal care time" as time to prepare themself for the pressures of society... it might be a "male" perspective but i see the leisure time component of shopping mentioned in the article in many cases as inculcated fake leisure time (for both genders).

Break up with her.

(http://forums.petrisimolin.com/media/19201/A58nw.gif)

I tried to teach my girlfriend to play SpaceChem, but she never got it. I mean, it is so fucking easy.

ARGH


Seriously enough, back when I started playing it, it wassss so ridiculously enthused by it that my girlfriend told me she wanted to try it out. SpaceChem has a very steep learning curve at the beginning, and I didnt expect her to enjoy it. She didn't :(

She has also asked me to teach her how to play Starcraft. Since we are living atm in different cities, this translates as having to instruct her remotely how to play. While I don't doubt she probably could have learned it, teaching someone how to play an RTS remotely is a pain in the ass, because you have to fucking figure out whats showing on the screen, while she is being flayed alive by zerglings (TeamViewer doesn't cooperate well with full screen directX games).

Interestingly, she and a friend of her are fucking hardcore on Zuma, and put me to fucking shame when I am like 5 levels behind them both.

A female friend of mine pretty much learned to play the Chrome version of Angry Birds on my laptop, and she pretty much broke all my records on first try, while she was fuckin learning.


Some high school female friends were hardcore on Starfox 64, and one of them really got hyped when playing, to the point she actually mastered a few metagaming rules about it.

spacechem has a really gentle curve, idk what you are talking about

So gentle it caress your personal areas.

Keeping the info flowing and the drama high, here's breaking news: Happy with her new found skills (as I empathetically and encouragingly call her new level of 1337 not die every fucking 2 seconds h4xx0r geam dexterity) my GF is persisting in playing Kirby's Epic Yarn and has reached world four, the "treats" world where there be much fluffy deserts and candies. I look forward to her next level-up.

@Dragonmaw: if I know you correctly you want me to dump her so you can "comfort" her. That is your plan isn't it? That's the reason you sprayed your leisure suit with fresh Brut and oiled your hair, isn't it? Evil, that's your true name, 'Maw!

I can help your lady with... playing some... gamessss

POINT AND CLICK ADVENTURE GAMES

that is all

read first and last page. sleepy

but if it hasn't been mentioned already. Plants Vs Zombies. I couldn't access my laptop for about 2 weeks after introducing that game.

My girlfriend is on a game design course with me, she hasn't played console really since PS1.

She did like the idea of us playing 'Rise of Nations' with each other and I've got some adventure games I hope she may like. I am also intent on making her play Amnesia.

Shouldn't this thread be in the "Things That Suck" thread? J/k  :lol:

I ph3ar there might have been some topic drift there...

What WOULD fit in that thread, though, is that Kirby's Epic Yarn has friggin' blind jumps in some places! WHY, KIRBY, WHY?! Imagine her frustration at that time... :'(

I bet she would just love Deadly Rooms of Death; especially The City Beneath! :eyebrows:

(bangin' my head to the table right now, this room is driving me insane. Damned Adders, I hate you!)

Played Rise of Nations with the girlfriend last night, she had played it a few years ago so I knew she had sort of an idea of what to do, but I'd go easy on her if I had to.

SHE DESTROYED ME. Like every unit and building I had, totally annihilated.

Guys I think I'm in love.

This. The game practically holds your hand through the entire adventure mode, and still is a lot of fun. My 7 year old brother managed to beat the whole daytime section without my help, and he had a blast. It also helps that the concept is simple to understand and funny (plant flowers to defend yourself against hordes of zombies). If I had to pick one game to introduce non-gamers to gaming, this would be it.

You know what, she complains about me not giving her enough flowers, so why not: Plants vs. Zombies it is!

first world problems

I bet Dwarf Fortress would be a great game for her.

But seriously, get a Game Boy Advance and show her Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, or Pokemon, or Fire Emblem, or one of the Mario remakes

Hehehehe... chuckle, chuckle, chuckle...

Hehehehe.....

Seriously...

I know a game. It's called intercourse. :tiger:

Thy is welcome.

It has a high learning curve, though. I'd recommend single player till you feel more comfortable.

  :eyebrows:

I tried it. She cried. It must be because she sucks and can't handle the input.

 :beg:

That's also one of very few games where sucking is not only not a problem, but it's actually encouraged.