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Games Entertainment

Your Mom And Gaming 76

Posted by Zonk from the lady-bought-me-a-nes-i'm-legally-obligated-to-love-her-now dept.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day in the US, and Newsweek's N'Gai Croal rightly estimates that many gamers owe a lot to their mothers. Because they indulged what they likely initially saw as a strange choice of hobby, we have a thriving gaming industry to enjoy today. The Level Up site offers an interview with a woman on the Newsweek staff who learned to tolerate those 'console things', and another piece where N'Gai interviews his own mom about his games-related past. "N'Gai: Growing up, you allowed us kids to have a computer, but we weren't allowed to have a videogame machine. What was your thinking behind that? Yvonne Croal: Well, in my estimation at that time, videogames were just another silly game. We certainly didn't want you to be spending 24/7 playing these games that we considered not productive in any way." If you're still looking for a gift for your own mom, Pop Cap is giving away a free copy of Bejeweled to anyone that signs up for their newsletter. Worked on my mom. Happy Mother's Day.
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Your Mom And Gaming More

Your Mom And Gaming

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  • Finally (Score:5, Funny)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @07:54PM (#19099899) Homepage Journal
    a chance to tag something "yourmom". I've been waiting since high school for this :P
  • I am particularly grateful for my Mom. Instead of seeing it as an odd hobby, she saw nothing wrong with it. She could even appriciate some of the effort that went into making them. Probably because she is an art teacher. I remember hearing one of my friends mothers say, "Games are wonderful because I always have something to get him for Christmas/Birthday." Don't forget to send your mother a little something on Sunday. =)

  • Momma Mia! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AbsoluteXyro ( 1048620 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:06PM (#19099987)

    My mom actually introduced me to video games. She was a hardcore Atari 2600 player back in her time (which she still has stuffed away in her closet with a hojillion games). When little ol' me came along, mom and I spent many-a happy afternoon playing Super Mario Bros. on the NES.

    Sadly, she stopped playing some time after that. I think tomorrow I will break out Wii Sports and see if I can't get her back into it... failing that, I'll boot up Super Mario Bros. on Virtual Console and share some memories :)

    • She was a hardcore Atari 2600 player back in her time (which she still has stuffed away in her closet with a hojillion games).

      Ho many games?
  • ...kicks ass in WoW (level 60 or something) together with her two kids (age ca. 30, level 60 or something)... and she do call herself "mom" in the game.
    Parents should try to play with their kids... instead of hanging on /. :D

  • Cooking Mama... duh! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:09PM (#19100009) Homepage Journal

    Of course, all those mothers out there who have just gotten into Wii games should get a copy of Cooking Mama. It's a kitchen sim of sorts, with lots of little tasks like cutting, peeling, stirring and serving food bits. Some of the recipes look pretty interesting.

    Or maybe your mom should get YOU this game, to let you learn a bit more about how to feed yourself properly, and not make her do all the kitchen work!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lorkki ( 863577 )

      Or just kinda, you know, get in there in the kitchen and ask to help out with her cooking. It's cheaper, you'll learn about the real thing right away and you get to spend some time together. Who knows, you might even become interested in trying things out for yourself.

      Dunno, maybe I'm just becoming old-fashioned.

    • Actually, no, don't. The Cooking Mama game for the Wii is crap. If possible, get the DS version instead, or try something else entirely.
    • I can see a misogynist joke brewing in this, somewhere, somehow.

      Git back in that virtual kitchen, woman. Or somesuch.

  • indulge choice of hobby? (Score:5, Funny)

    by aichpvee ( 631243 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:14PM (#19100033) Journal
    Forget indulging the choice of hobby, a lot of gamers owe their mom first for the 35 years of living in her basement!

    • Re:indulge choice of hobby? (Score:5, Funny)

      by agent dero ( 680753 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:47PM (#19100185) Homepage
      Here's to you Mom, may we have another good 35 together.

      p.s. Did you pick up more cheetos from the store?
    • You mean I have to move out in four years???

      I would send out props too, but I know she is less geeky than I am, therefor has much better things to do with her time. Alas if I could procreate with someone, would my kids be geekier than I am? That is enough that I am going out now to have my tubes snipped just on the outside chance that I might someday actually have sex.

  • 20 minutes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spykemail ( 983593 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:16PM (#19100043) Homepage
    After about 20 minutes of trying to teach my Mom to play Roger Clemen's MVP Baseball on my NES my brother and I gave up and she concluded that video games were annoying and unproductive, but ok. Thank God for that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shalla ( 642644 )
      That's because you tried to make her play Roger Clemen's MVP Baseball. WTF is that? I hate to tell you this, but most gamers I know find sports games boring after the first week. Get her a nice roleplaying or puzzle game to play. I bet she could get into a Final Fantasy story or Tetris or something. Or maybe just get her to jigzone.com to get her in the mood for computerized entertainment and go from there.

      My mother played Space Invaders obsessively for two days on the Atari console my parents had boug
    • My mother never saw the attraction of video games when we were growing up. When I came home for Christmas last year, I showed her Wii Sports and BAM she was hooked. She spent the rest of the break taking on family, friends, neighbors, anyone she could convince to sit down for a nice casual game of bowling. I never knew Mom used to bowl in college! She was mostly disabled by a stroke three years ago and I had to hold her up so she could bowl, but she looked happier throwing strikes ("Mom, what comes afte

  • Indulged a choice of hobby? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Skevin ( 16048 ) * on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:18PM (#19100051) Journal
    Lots of things flourished without the support of our mothers... like online porn.
    And if you're one of the rare few whose mother encouraged your interest in porn, I really don't want to know.

    Solomon

  • Mother's day corrupted (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DebateG ( 1001165 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:22PM (#19100073)
    It's pretty sad that, like most American holidays, Mother's Day has been corrupted into a holiday that celebrates consumption and hollow platitudes rather than anything meaningful. One of the original premises of Mother's Day [wikipedia.org] was a call to women worldwide to stand up against violence and war that had taken the lives of so many of their sons. It wasn't a tribute to mothers, but a rallying cry for mothers of the US to band together in a political cause to improve the world. The "mother" of Mother's Day [wikipedia.org] became so disillusioned with the commercialization of the holiday that she actively campaigned against it.
  • plays games.

    Does killing your karma like this give you bad real-life karma?

  • Hey! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Frogbert ( 589961 ) <frogbert@gmail . c om> on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:30PM (#19100119)
    I have a mum you insensitive clod!
  • Frozen bubble is a much better "free" game. But since you're all nerds.. if you're going to give a free game how about writing one yourself! and personalize it! (cuz its not about the money)
    • Frozen Bubble is just a ripoff of Bust-A-Move. I'm sick of open source fans talking about it as if it was the second coming of God when it's just a port/ripoff of an already established (and popular) game series.
      • so ... bejeweled hasn't been copied (ripped off) over and over ?
        heck even MSN messenger has a bejeweled game. the parent just told that probably
        because it's much easier to get your hands on frozen bubble than on the real bust-a-move
        • so ... bejeweled hasn't been copied (ripped off) over and over ?

          I didn't say it hadn't.

          the parent just told that probably
          because it's much easier to get your hands on frozen bubble than on the real bust-a-move

          No, they probably said that because they're a hard-core open source advocate who has zero respect for intellectual property whatsoever and therefore doesn't care that it's a blatant rip-off. Or they're a hard-core open source advocate who isn't a gamer (other than open source games) who doesn't realize

  • omgzergrush (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Legion303 ( 97901 )
    Your mom likes "team play."

  • this article is horrible (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @08:56PM (#19100249) Journal
    Maybe it's just me but I find the article to be little more than cock stroking among a peer group in effect.

    "I said no to my kids playing games and now they're all well adjusted perfectly fine kids, this clearly shows that no games was what made my kids will adjusted" and then she says "It's a delight to see my kids sitting down and talking, the subject doesn't even matter". So if they all sat down and discussed Half life's plot is that some how being well adjusted and delightful, or is it suddenly evil as the topic is games?

    Secondly, she points out how fantastic radio dramas are, yet the reasons she says they are good is the exact thing a good game of Nethack will give you. That little rat known as a Q is infact trying to rip your throat out, so maybe your character dodges, left, then right and finally thrusts his sword into the foul beast. Yet because the medium is different it is "clearly" some evil twisted non-imagination based thing.

    Seems to me like this is just some mother going "oh my kids are great, I raised them so well!" when she has zero evidence of what happens if she had let them all watch porn all day and play games to their fill because there is only 1 chance to do it and you will never know the alternative's results.

    • she has zero evidence of what happens if she had let them all watch porn all day and play games to their fill because there is only 1 chance to do it and you will never know the alternative's results
      Don't worry, I turned out fine!

      If I had mod points, I would have modded you up, instead of posting this.

  • For the information of anyone interested in the free Bejeweled offer, apparently the offer is only good for Bejeweled Deluxe for Windows .

    I was ready to jump on this offer, as my Mom adores Bejeweled. Mom, however, is a Mac user -- and it looks like Mac using Moms need to pay cash.

    Mom is, of course, worth it -- but after this experience I'll probably buy her one of her other favourites (from another publisher) instead.

    Yaz.

  • Let's hear it for gamer moms! (Score:3)

    by gotroot801 ( 7857 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @10:27PM (#19100751) Homepage Journal
    My mom was an avid gamer. She didn't pwn n00bs in Halo or anything, but she was a devoted Super Mario Bros. addict, from SMB1 through SMB Sunshine. Even before the NES, she loved Astrosmash and Burger Time for the Intellivision. And my dad thought those video games were for me and my brother...

    I still miss those phone calls I used to get from her when she'd ask me how to get past a boss or particularly difficult part of the game.
  • Our parents bought us an Atari 2600 when we were kids; we played that thing until the colors went funky and all the controllers were broken. Even with that, they decided that the 2600 was all the game system we'd ever need, and refused to buy us anything newer. (I'd visit my NEW BEST FRIEND with the NES all the time.)

    When I got my first job (at the local Kmart), I ended up taking matters into my own hands and bought an original Game Boy. When my mom saw it, she went ballistic; Why are you wasting your m
  • My mom never seemed to "get" video games most of the time, or at least the allure of them. Until... River City Ransom. For some reason, THAT was the one game that she picked up with me and would complain if I wanted to stop playing. She said she liked "beating them up and taking their lunch money" over and over.... many happy hours spent that way. Nothing before or since has captured her like that.
  • Myst, Neverwinter Nights, Pirates, Monkey Island, King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Age of Empires, Civilization, Warlords, Heroes of Might and Magic... I could go on, but you probably get the jist of it.

    My Dad also games, but he sticks to the FPS games. Unreal series is his favorite.

    Maybe it's just the generation gap. I was born just a few years before the advent of video game consoles, and my parents were still young early-20's types then, and they'd played with arcade games before. They picked up an Atar

  • A little OT, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alpha830RulZ ( 939527 ) on Saturday May 12, 2007 @11:52PM (#19101131)
    My mom bought us a TRS 80 (remember those?) back in the day, that was a key start into my life in computing. She was too cheap to buy a PC when I got one in '82, so she had her brother in law, who worked for IBM, get her a discounted IBM desktop machine of some sort, whose name I can't recall. It had a tiny little 8 inch CRT, 16k of RAM, a tape drive as the only storage, and APL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_lang uage)/ [wikipedia.org] as an embedded language in it. It didn't do anything, and she wanted a word processor, so, she wrote one. In APL. It was pretty close the first program she ever wrote in her life. It didn't do much, opened a file, allowed you to type into it, position a cursor, etc, but I was impressed, and still am. She inspired me to try things I didn't know how to do or even try, which has been good for me.

    Happy Mothers day, Mom.
  • My mom is 50, and she had a World of Warcraft account, on which she got her character to level 25, before complaining of the grind. Also, she really likes Morrowind.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Stroot ( 223139 )
      My brother and me were born in the 70's and played all kind of games since the early 80's.
      My mother always showed interest in them too. She doesn't like FPS and other high paced action games (me neither) but she played rpg's, rts, adventures etc.
      For example the kings quests series, gabriel knight, heroes of might and magic, age of empires, quite a few of the same games mentioned earlier.

      At the moment she is age 60+ and playing a level 70 healer and level 70 crafter in Everquest2 a few times a week. People a

  • Equalizer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13, 2007 @04:04AM (#19102165)
    I grew up with a brother in a wheelchair. When the Atari 2600 came out, I begged for one for my birthday and managed to convince my mom to get it. My bro and I played it a lot and she realized it was something he and I (and her sometimes) could do together and his being in a wheelchair wasn't an issue. Then he got an Intellivision. Man! We'd kick ass all day and night playing baseball (20-inning tied games, nobody else could touch us) and racing (we found all the little tracks between the real ones, houses, etc).

    Now that the games are better, mom is more into them: Oblivian and the like. When we used to do a lot of RPG'ing, she was even a dedicated and talented GM! Beat that!!

    You GO mom! Happy Mom's day!
  • My mother was a programmer / geek many years before I was born. I must have been in my mid-late 20s before I was answering as many techie questions as I asked. I still remember her helping me through my first kernel re-compilation when I was 9 or 10 (should I be ashamed to admit that it was SCO unix?)

    Now, at well over 60, she's still geek enough that she's an officer in an end-game raiding guild in WoW.

    Now that I have kids of my own, I hope that I'm still keeping up with the latest tech in 30+ years time!
  • Given that my mom is the resident Legend of Zelda fanatic in our household, and the one who's always burning all the bandwidth on WoW. She did more than indulge our gaming, she participated. I got her a copy of Four Swords Adventures for Christmas and she was ecstatic. Kind of a freak, but we love her all the more.
  • Alas, since my mom is very much the senior citizen, and well into her golden years, she's never managed to get into the electronic games scene (even on a computer, which she doesn't own nor has shown any interest in owning). The truth is, if I gave her an electronic game for Mother's Day, she'd think I'd lost my mind (unless there were flowers and chocolate also tucked away inside the box somewhere).
  • i'm not sure what exactly has been going through her head these years, but until the release of ps2/gamecube/xbox my mother purchased every major console (including saturn and dreamcast!) for me when they came out. she helped me map out dungeons in the original LoZ, helped me defuse the bombs at the dam level in TMNT, fought me for playtime on kingdom hearts 1 and 2; fought alongside me in (i can't believe i'm admitting this) the chronicles of narnia for PS2; and continues to lecture me about how my swing i
  • *Holds envelope to forehead/turban.

    Your Mom and Gaming

    Two Things I did Last Night. Hi-O.

    mnmnmmmthat's good satire.

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