Impressing My Wife With My Gaming Expertise...
I'm a gaming geek. And as much as I like to show how inaccurate the stereotype is, I'm unfortunately not too far off. Oh, I'm a social gaming geek. I think I crossed from marginally introverted to marginally extroverted a couple of years after puberty. I don't live in my parents' basement, I'm not 18 anymore (dang it!), and I don't own all the current-gen consoles.

Okay. So maybe I am not quite a stereotypical gaming geek. But --- there are times when my lack of traditional manly expertise bugs my wife. Particularly when it comes to things like household repairs or natural handyman tendencies with machinery. I often get calls asking my opinion on things like "Why is the air conditioner not working?" or "Can you see why the sink is backed up?" or "Do you know why the garage door opener is on fire?"

Now, she's an intelligent and talented lady, so at one point I tried to answer such questions with a response to the effect of, "Well, you can look it up and find out as easily as I can!" I mean, it's the honest truth - she's as smart as I am, and I'm as clueless as she is when it comes to some of these things.

You know how in video games, sometimes a boss enemy will telegraph that they are about to unload a whole mess of pain on you, filling the screen with flames and rockets and death-rays, so you know you have about one second to dive for cover before you are insta-gibbed? Well, I learned that this was the response my wife gives when I tried to answer her this way. I've learned to avoid this boss attack. So I try to avoid answering in this manner.

See? Video game skillz really can help you in real life!

So I have to pretend to be the handyman that she wants me to be, and I look up how to do things, do a terrible job of it, and then end up shelling out the big bucks to some professional to fix what I screwed up. But occasionally I get the job done right, and my wife gets to feel that yes, once in a while her gaming-geek man can actually repair a toilet.

Every once in a while she throws a soft pitch at me, like, "The Internet connection is down." Ah-hah! Yes, that one I can usually handle, or at least step her through the process if I'm at work.

But the best one of all came yesterday around lunchtime. She messaged me with a single statement - "I need to find a new game to play." She'd apparently gotten bored with all fifteen BAZILLION or so variations of solitaire that come with the mother of all solitaire programs, the (indie!) game "Pretty Good Solitaire." I picked that one up for her for Christmas a couple of years back, and she plays it a lot. One game for two years --- yeah, I'd get bored with it too, I guess. She's got others, but she was looking for something new to try.

Would I possibly know a game that might appeal to her? Maybe some small, downloadable or web-based game out there that she might enjoy.

Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, I might... :)

Those years of being being involved in the indie games scene (and it's cousin, the casual games scene) finally paid off in one glorious instant!

Now I just gotta hope the garage door opener doesn't catch fire for the next couple of weeks...


For the curious, my picks for her included:

• Desktop Tower Defense (Which was the one that hooked her yesterday. I could tell when I called her later and she sounded distracted and I heard the tell-tale sounds of high-pitched creeps saying, "Let's Go!")
• Cake Mania and Cake Mania 2
• Virtual Villagers: A New Home and Virtual Villagers: The Lost Children
• My wife is a fan of adventure games and RPGs, and she already knew (and suggested herself) Aveyond and Cute Knight.
• I also recommended the (now FREE!) Sam & Max episode Abe Lincoln Must Die.
• And - duh. Anything at Popcap.com. She's been a Bejeweled fan for years.
  

Labels: casual games, Indie Evangelism

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