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How To Get Your Girl Into Gaming

Advice from Mrs. Shipwreck, a gamer wife

Most girls who grew up with My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite, Care Bears, and Barbie have a very limited gaming past. I started gaming on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I don’t remember why my sister and I were so enthralled with getting a NES, but we knew everyone else wanted one, so we thought we should have one too. We played Super Mario Brothers. We played Super Mario Brothers 2. We played Super Mario Brothers 3. We played Mario Is Missing, which was boring…very boring. It wasn’t until we bought the Zelda guide that we realized where we could find the red lantern and then Zelda became fun too, which brings me to my first point.

Tip #1: Limit the frustration! Games are not fun if we can’t control them. Nor are they fun if we get stuck in the same place and keep dying. If your chosen female gaming partner isn’t really into gaming to begin with, she’s definitely not going to be dedicated enough to die repeatedly without making progress. This illustrates the reason why I never play games that involve flying airplanes. If you hand a woman a controller early in her gaming career, don’t expect her to master the whole “up is down” and “down is up” thing. Gaming should be fun, so explain the controls/rules/concept prior to hitting “Start” or she’ll be dead before she even knew what hit her. If she’s playing a single-player game that seems to be getting frustrating, buy the guide (or visit GameFAQs). It’ll save you BOTH a lot of frustration.

Tip #2: Try games that might seem more “girly” in nature, but don’t assume that’s all we will like. Sure, I love the cuteness of Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and Super Princess Peach, but I also enjoy the headshots of Goldeneye, GRAW, and Metal Gear Solid. I have even outlived my husband on occasion. While I may not be the most accurate shot, I can still have fun poppin’ caps.

Tip #3: The couple that plays together, stays together. To have a shot at getting your girl into gaming, she has to somewhat like you. If she likes you, she probably likes spending time with you. Find games you can play together in cooperative mode. A few good choices are Baldur’s Gate, Champions of Norath, Kameo, X-Men Legends, and Lego Star Wars. The bonus with these games is that you can select characters that are designed to each of your strengths. I am not an accurate marksman, so I tend to gravitate to the wizard/sorceress/mage type characters. I can still kill just as many enemies as Mr. Shipwreck and I tend to die less than if I were an elf-ish character. Help your woman choose the character that is best for her.

With some one-player games, you can have fun taking turns by passing the controller back and forth. This worked well with Paper Mario, Kingdom Hearts, Sphinx (a very underrated game), Futurama, and Psychonauts (why did no one buy this game?). The Mario Party games are fun, but a warning… you must be very comfortable in your new relationship as co-gamers before playing against each other. Many a Mario Party has ended with me being relatively angry with Mr. Shipwreck. Users beware.

Tip #4: Find a genre she likes and stick with it. Some games are appealing because they are nostalgic (Mario, Zelda, Tetris, PaperBoy). There are a million different puzzle games that we’ve played (Devil Dice, Bust-A-Move, Pokemon Puzzle Challenge). I play Zoo Tycoon and Harvest Moon because I like creating my own gameplay elements. If you get confident enough, bring your significant other to a video game store and figure out what interests her. If the game turns out to be crap (as so many of them do), don’t be afraid to turn it off before frustration ensues (see Tip #1).

The most important thing to remember to be successful at getting your girl into gaming is that it’s your job to make gaming fun for her. Girl gamers are increasingly common and while we don’t have games that directly appeal to our gender like Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball (with new multi-breast physics), we still have our niche in the market. Mr. Shipwreck bought me a teal DS because it matched my Kate Spade handbag.

Of course not all women are the same, so don’t assume that we’ll all like the same games. However, here are my top choices for games to get you started:

Games I Enjoyed Playing Alone:

• Animal Crossing
• Harvest Moon (coincidently, some of the games in this series I hated, others I loved: Musical Melodies, Back to Nature = good, A Wonderful Life = bad)
• Kaya: The Dark Lineage
• New Super Mario Brothers
• Any non 3-D Zelda game
• Broken Sword Shadow of the Templars & Smoking Mirror
• Adventures of Lolo
• Legend of Mana (this game would have gone over better if I had the guide – buy the guides!)
• Zoo Tycoon – the PC Version
• The Nancy Drew Series – these would also fall under the category of “games I’m most likely not to admit playing”

Games I Enjoyed Playing with Mr. Shipwreck:

• Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance 1&2
• Champions of Norrath & Champions Return to Arms
• GRAW
• Goldeneye & 007: Agent Under Fire
• Lego Star Wars
• Star Wars Battlefront 1&2
• Halo 2
• Devil Dice
• Mario Party (either I get mad because I lose or because I think he’s letting me win on purpose)
• Kameo

Single-Player Games We Took Turns Playing:

• Psychonauts
• Futurama
• Metal Gear Solid
• Jak and Daxter
• Sphinx
• Paper Mario & Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
• Kingdom Hearts
• Katamari Damacy
• Medievil
• Hot Shots Golf (Yes, it has multi-player, but we had more fun taking turns.)

You forgot to add:

Let her win.

I think mrs. shipwreck needs to have a conversation with mrs. javeryh.

Very good advice mrs. shipwreck. One game I would recommend to everyone is the Super Monkey Ball games. They are available on every system and it is fun for everyone. It has very easy controls and many different modes of play. Plus it has the cute factor going for it.

Mario Kart Double Dash is one Mrs. Cheapy wanted me to add.
She really liked riding on the back of the cart and throwing shells.

I'm not entirely convinced that someone can be made into a gamer. Unless they have a potential gamer hidden away and they've never had the proper exposure, you cant turn lead into gold.

Originally Posted by CheapyD Mario Kart Double Dash is one Mrs. Cheapy wanted me to add. She really liked riding on the back of the cart and throwing shells.

MKD is by far the #1 family game in my house. My son and I drive against each other while the girls throw the shells,etc.
Even teams = Good times.

Originally Posted by CheapyD Mario Kart Double Dash is one Mrs. Cheapy wanted me to add. She really liked riding on the back of the cart and throwing shells.

At you or with you?

Mrs. Shipwreck. have you played any of the live arcade games? Pretty good.

Originally Posted by sying At you or with you? Mrs. Shipwreck. have you played any of the live arcade games? Pretty good.

I'll make a few comments, (since mrs. shipwreck is currently at school and won't be able to reply until this afternoon) but I'll let her go into more detail if she wants then.

She's played and likes some of the Live Arcade puzzle games, but usually under my GamerTag so I can leach the achievement points off her. I'm not sure if she's played any of the non-puzzle games on Live Arcade.

As far as Mario Kart Double Dash, that game is on my list of 150 games I haven't played, and she hasn't played it either. We'll have to give that one a shot I guess.

Some of those tips made it seem like girls were "special" people.

This is a very well written and informative article that I will pass on to Mrs. Number83. But at this point in our six year marriage, I can't help but wonder if it's too late. I tried getting her to play Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution, you know something more than button mashing, but all I got is a 'meh'!

Originally Posted by Dr Mario Kart I'm not entirely convinced that someone can be made into a gamer. Unless they have a potential gamer hidden away and they've never had the proper exposure, you cant turn lead into gold.

Agreed.

My wife is a gamer, but she was one before I met her, so I don't know about getting someone turned into one. I don't see how you could though if the desire wasn't there. I know, for example, I'm not going to magically like sports because someone keeps making me watch them.

Originally Posted by willardhaven Some of those tips made it seem like girls were "special" people.

but girls are special people because of the... you know... boobs.

well, women are known to be "gamingly" challenged.

During puberty, crucial nutrients are stripped away from the brain and redirected to the boobies. Look it up.

Also, women hate fun.

My girlfriend likes LEGO Star Wars and X-Men Legends a lot. She likes Burnout 3 too, but not the racing modes, more crash oriented stuff. She also likes Fable/Jade Empire type single player RPGs.

Anyways, one other tip is not to get fustrated when they can't make all the fancy jumping maneuvers and such in games. I've got reemed out before because of that...

Tip #4 is key. Find a genre she likes.

My girlfriend cozies up to puzzle games so quickly. Girls also seem to really like Zelda games, too, for some reason.

Originally Posted by CheapyD Mario Kart Double Dash is one Mrs. Cheapy wanted me to add. She really liked riding on the back of the cart and throwing shells.

My wife and I played the hell out of that game together. We actually played 2 player vs. mode for all of the grand prix races, but we concentrated on keeping the competition off each other's asses so one of us would win.

She wasn't real big on just riding on the back of the cart.

pIXZ?

Originally Posted by Dr Mario Kart I'm not entirely convinced that someone can be made into a gamer. Unless they have a potential gamer hidden away and they've never had the proper exposure, you cant turn lead into gold.

Exactly.

I always see these threads about guys wanting to "convert" girls into gamers, like there is some magic switch to flip that will suddenly make them crave Valkyrie Profile 2 or want to play through Half Life 2. I know the OP is a female but now we'll see posts like "Oh, I've got to try these tricks on my gf, maybe it will work on her!"

It's a very rare case if it happens, and yea, it does happen, but most guys can expect their significant others to get into The Sims and Animal Crossing and nothing more. Maybe some puzzle games, too.

My gf mostly plays old school stuff... Mario, Sonic, Ghosts and Goblins, but nothing Playstation on up unless it's the DS (2d games again, like Princess Peach) or The Sims.

Am I the only one without a Mrs. counterpart now?