GCG Feature: ‘Confessions of a Non-Gaming Mom'

Gamasutra’s sister site GameCareerGuide.com is celebrating Women and Games this week and today has an article from a woman who was, until recently, a self-professed non-gaming mom. Then something happened that made her pick up video games. It had nothing to do with her two sons, who are recreational game players, and everything to do with hardware. Amy Addison is a writer who is completely unaffiliated with the game industry, and her opinions about and experience with video games are not uncommon for a typical “non-gaming mom.” In this excerpt from the article, she shares her response to video game controllers: “… I’m married and have children -- boy children. They, of course, have video game systems. To me, these systems look like Mission Control for NASA, so I never play with them. I can’t. There are too many buttons. The controller for the Nintendo GameCube looks like a swollen M. It fits quite nicely in your hand, I admit, but the buttons! What are all those buttons for? … I blinked at this odd thing my child had handed me and asked me to operate and asked him what the buttons did. This was clearly not the game controller of my childhood. My son’s explanation went something like this: ‘You move with the control stick, you use the ‘L’ and ‘R’ buttons to shield, press the ‘Z’ button to grab, the ‘A’ button is a standard attack, ‘B’ button is special attack, if you press Over and ‘B’ at the same time or Up and ‘B’ or Down and ‘B’ it does a different special attack, it’s different for each character. ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are jump and if you go Up and ‘A’ or Over and ‘A’ or Down and ‘A’ you smash attack, which you can charge up if you want. Then the ‘C’ stick is like doing the smash attack, except, whichever way you push it, it’s not as powerful. But it’s easier. Then the last thing is the ‘D’ pad, depending on which way you push, it is a different taunt. Oh, and you also use ‘A’ to pick up items.’ Now imagine that explanation with the rapid-fire delivery of an auctioneer and hand signals that could land a fleet of fighter jets. At this point, instead of sitting down to play video games with my children, I took a nap to recover from the simple act of trying to understand the control pad.” To read Amy Addison’s complete article, visit GameCareerGuide.com.