Here’s a tale, of no particular import or meaning, just a gaming-related Christmas happenstance that got into my head, and I need a little catharsis.
I spent the Christmas week, as so many do, with my parents. While it’s good to see them, it’s always a little odd, even infuriating – I’m cut off from most of my gaming IV drip, and their continued resistance to broadband means I don’t even get to check up on whatever electronic delights the rest of the world’s spending the festive season with. So, this last Christmas, I was down to the barest basics – their PC, a machine barely capable of Peggle, and too far behind with Windows Updates and drivers to actually manage it. In desperation, I cast around for something, anything to play.
I found, in a box of my old possessions, Doom. Trusty Doom, still the litmus test of any new piece of hardware. It’s also still something I love to play – I suspect I’ve scurried thorough its first level more times than any element of any other game. I dig it out a few times every year. It’s part fascination of where all this began and how little, in many ways, it’s changed, and part because it’s a manic hybrid of speed, carnage and joyful imprecision that offers up more raw fun per second than most anything in the 15 years that followed it.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll admit that squinting at my Dad’s 15” monitor and playing with a keyboard caked in some six or seven years’ worth of grime and dead skin cells wasn’t quite as appealing as hooking up the Xbox 360 I’d brought with me to the big telly in the living room. On it was Doom, purchased from the Xbox Live Marketplace. It’s still Doom as we know it, but bigger and flashier and agreeably siller than on a wheezing Pentium-something.
Soon enough, my Dad starts watching me play over my shoulder. He must have seen me cursor-key my way through Doom on the family 486 years ago, but it seems it’s been consigned to the same 256-colour compost heap of disapproval that he lumped pretty much everything I played back then into. That’s not quite true – it was my Dad’s Spectrum, replete with Manic Miner and The Hobbit, that first introduced me to gaming, and I’ve foggy but fond memories of playing Lemmings and Gobliins 2 with him on that 486. Then as now though, games weren’t something he wanted to spend much time with, he certainly wasn’t keen on my playing as much of them as I did, and he hasn’t had much to do with them himself since around 1992. As far as he’s concerned, Doom is a whole new thing – he’s no idea whether it’s a modern game or not, but knowing that his son is somehow making a living from playing these things, he’s now developed some genuine curiosity about them. I do the decent thing, and hand him the controller.
Of course I know that controlling motion with one hand and vision with the other is an acquired skill, one that half the world doesn’t have. It’s still a shock to see just how alien it is to someone who has never, ever done it before. He struggled so, and no advice I could offer him made it any easier. Whether it’s WASD and a mouse or a left and right thumbstick, it’s basically patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time and, of everything in gaming, this is the ability most specific to our generation. Is it the be all and end all of game control, or will we too be staring with mixed wonder and horror at what 20-somethings are capable of once we’re 50-something? I suspect technology is so ingrained into our lives that, dwindling reflexes aside, we’ll be just fine.
For him though, even the idea of 360 degree, first-person-perspective movement pretending to be 3D on a flat 2D surface was a struggle. I’d tell him to turn to face left, and he’d spin around and around and around, not sure where he’d started from, staring with bemusement at the all-too-similar wall textures whizzing across the screen. Or he’d strafe directly left, grinding Doomguy’s invisible shoulder against the wall while he tried to remember how to face, not move.
True, Doom’s murky architecture doesn’t help – I’m well-accustomed to spotting the variance on a poorly-textured wall that denotes a door, but the grey of metal and the grey of concrete looked too similar to eyes accustomed only to photo-real. “Open that door,” I’d say. He’d pause. Then he’d cautiously run to the nearest bit of wall, squint at the controller, sometimes correctly remember that the green button was the use key, and frown when nothing happened. No, Dad. That’s just a wall. No, Dad. You can’t move further forwards because there’s a barrel right in front of you. No, Dad. You can’t open that door because you don’t have the yellow keycard. You can tell it needs the yellow keycard because there are yellow lights on the…. oh, never mind. I’ll just tell you where to go. He was trying to learn how to see in a way I take for granted, and I just couldn’t find the words to tell him how.
There was improvement, eventually. He persevered through four levels, and by the end he was able to move and then turn, or turn and then move, but never the both at once. I’m sure, with practice, he’d have got there in the end, though of course he didn’t want to. Mountains to climb, cars to fix, bicycles to ride. Worthy pursuits, not staring at a screen and shooting pretend monsters.
Concerned he was thinking this was all that modern gaming was, I later showed him a little bit of Mass Effect’s moral decision-making (hey, I’d have gone for Planescape if I’d have had with me), hoping to demonstrate that my hobby/career wasn’t as one-note dumb as Doom suggested, but I didn’t get the sense it was impressing him much. I suspect my talk of this being a game for grown-ups was undone by all the spaceguns and sexy alien ladies, hallmarks of what he probably suspects videogames always have been and always will be. He claimed he wouldn’t have the attention span to play such a dialogue-intensive thing himself, but did seem to take some brief entertainment from choosing conversational options for me. “Yeah, threaten him. Ooh, flirt with her.”
Gaming’s clearly not beyond him – there isn’t some insurmountable generational gulf, but the amount of time he’d have to put into it to overcome decades of unfamiliarity is understandably not worth his while. It was a little humbling, trying to rationalise what I do to a man who, while supportive of me, clearly doesn’t consider gaming much beyond the level of a fairground ride. There was no argument on the matter – he never (as he often did in my youth) criticised me for basing so much my life around these things, and I never criticised him for thinking them mere frippery.
I haven’t spoken to him about it since, but I’d like to think there was some mutual acceptance that we’d never feel the same way about gaming, and that was fine. I would have (and indeed have) argued the import of my premiere hobby to a peer, or even to a 50-something man who I wasn’t related to, but, for all the evidence to the contrary I’ve observed since I’ve been an adult myself, it’s hard to entirely shake the old Dad Knows Best hangover. Sat there, patiently explaining “look, I can be mean to this guy, or I can be nice to him!” or “this red key opens this red door!”, I felt silly, a kid demonstrating how his He-Man action figure’s kung-fu chop worked. I appreciated his attempts at interest, but I also desperately wanted him to go away, to leave me to it, so my escapism wasn’t ruined so by his perplexed reality.
Back at home, back at RPS, I’m thinking straight again, reminded anew of the myriad ways in which gaming is taking entertainment to places it’s never been before, how it’s defining our culture, how it’s letting people create their own stories in an ever-changing way television or prose cannot. So it’s all okay, pretty much. There’s just this slight regret – my parents don’t really get what I’m doing with my life, and they never will. I look at my stack of games, my array of consoles, the expensive GeForce 8800 churning away inside my PC, and I think about how meaningless it all is to the people who created me. I guess that’s the silent sadness my dad feels when he starts to explain how a car engine works, or about how he’s climbed all the Munros, and spots the yawn I didn’t mean to make.
So yeah – there’s no import, no meaning, no insight to this post. It’s just a gentle sigh. And then onwards.
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Forgot to mention, my dad would obliterate any opposition in Minstorm on the Vectrex.
I had a lot of fun with that quirky old console as well but my dad always beat me at Minestorm.
http://www.smc.org.uk/Munros/Compleatists.php?ID=3500
Here’s Alec Meer’s dad.
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Also, on the subject of my dad is better than your dad, my dad was the youngest Portuguese Merchant Navy’s Chief Mate (The position just below the Captain) of all time. Hah!
He also got me into gaming through Jumping Jack on the Spectrum 48K, but I guess that kind of pales in comparison to the Navy thing.
My Dad’s an engineer and he gets a big kick out of playing Armadillo Run. Pity there isn’t another game like it that it could be a “gateway” to…
My mother occaisionally accuses me of being ‘addicted’ to games, but refuses to admit that hour for hour she spends just as much time gaming. Apparently, Spider Solitaire and Ultimate Mahjonng don’t count as games.
My dad has little time to play, although he enjoys flight sims. And although he’ll never probably play them, he’ll often take an interest in discussing whatever I’ve been playing recently.
Thanks for the post!!
I played with my dad through the last level of Portal/fight with Glados. While he vaguely saw the fun involved in throwing oneself about while you are insulted by a machine, i could tell that he was humoring me. He said he found the intensity of a first person world in which one must run, jump and shoot too hard to cope with.
As you say, I don’t think my dad feels gaming is anything beyond a fairground ride, something that does not engage my brain and emotions. I know games do, but i can’t seem to help him understand that.
It is hard to relate to my parents the fun i have in team fortress 2 for instance – something they refers to as a “that other killing game.”
Has the generational gap always been so apparent? Or is gaming just the new medium through which children can bemuse the people who created them?
I just sent this article (and the gamasutra interview w/ the lady that co-created centipede) to my dad. My grandfather/his dad was actually responsible for my gaming hobby/IT career, and my father was rather into Centipede back in the day…but yea, I had the same disapproval, “dad only wants to do ‘outdoors’ stuff, can’t-believe-you’re-spending-your-money-on-that” issue. (Though I wish I had been more balanced, actually…)
Although, now that I think about it, the hour or two he spent trying to get Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic configured to run for me, or the repair bill for sending in our Tandy 1000 because Deskmate kept randomly crashing (which turned out to be that I had had to set the video ram to 16k (instead of 32k) in order to run Gunship), might have contributed to that… :)
Hmm, guess you can’t edit posts…
Anyway, addendum:
RE: Same-generation disconnect: A couple (several?) years ago, whilst playing some version of Worms on the Dreamcast with a couple girls that had come over… A health pack, or rather, a white square with a red cross on it drifted down and one of them asked “What’s that?” and I just remember being startled at the game “language” that most of us take for granted…
Watching my Wife try and play portal (and learn WASD and mouselook at the same time) was rather maddening as well.
This is a really superb article that I think most gamers can relate to. Thanks for sharing Alec.
Had to laugh at the part about broadband resistance – my ould fella is the same. He only got his frist DVD player last year, we never had a VCR at home growing up. So I’m trying to persuade him to get broadband and the only argument I could come up with to convince him was that we would visit more often if I wasn’t going to be jacked out of my web feed while there.
I should also mention that I am in a Day Of Defeat:Source clan whose members average 35+ and whose oldest member is 60 odd.
I agree, great article. While my parents weren’t responsible for my gaming addiction, they certainly supported it and were a part of it. Today they’re both in their mid 60’s and play games far more than I do – mostly WoW but also a variety of strategy and RPG games. They never did get into FPS games for similar reasons to the ones mentioned in the article – although they’re both very familiar with the first-person view, neither particulalry enjoy or are good at that “laser fingered” gameplay (as my dad puts it). In my general circle of friends and acquaintances though, my parents are essentially unique. And better for it.
Very interesting article – far too common experience ;)
The comments are also nice. What’s the difference between elderly playing digital games and the ones that don’t?
I guess it’s not just the use of computers and stuff.
“I think it’ll be interesting to think what we’ll, as adept gamer-types, be like as Dads (or Mums, for that matter).”
My girlfriend has four kids; one six, three (triplets) three year olds.
She has insisted that her eldest play the original Real Games first: Mario 1, Sonic The Hedgehog, etc.
You should see his eyes light up with I play WoW or Team Fortress 2. It’s like watch a child on chri… er… like a hardcore gamer staring at 2 gigs of free RAM.
I know I’m very late on this one but my dad is a gamer. I ‘proper’ gamer, I remember him teaching me to play C C over the network in his office and playing quake with him and my friends. In fact I used to play Doom with him. I was very young, he would control it and all I did was press the fire button but it was awesome! Gave me some pretty bad nightmares though hehe!
Late response here too …
My parents are in their early 50’s now. My mom used to play a couple of games in the late 80’s, “Bouncing Babies” on our IBM PC mainly. My dad used to enjoy a couple more titles – Lode Runner and Q-Bert mostly. So he is what introduced me to gaming originally. But he seemed to loose interest after our 486 and games started becoming more complex. I could never even convince my parents to play NES with me aside from one frustrating try at Super mario bros. the day we got it.
I have had several semi-recent opportunities to show my dad games though with interesting results. In 2002, I managed to convince him to play Dance Dance Revolution with me in an arcade. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy it, to my surprise.
Also, a couple of years ago he was visiting my house and needed to log onto my computer to access a website for work. When he was done and we were still at the computer, I loaded up Half Life 2, which had just come out, and I wanted to show him how far graphics technology had progressed since the old days of Lode Runner… His first reaction upon seeing it, he said “What an incredible world…”, kind of with a awed look on his face. I thought that was pretty interesting :)
Hey ho late posting here but I had to say something after reading this. Great writing and something I can also relate to, pretty much the same story as everybody else above me here and its a fairly common theme that, interests/new fads/new tech stretches from generation to generation, and the previous generations never understand the newer generations.
Your dad accepting your hobby that is obviously not entirely consuming your life (I assume you leave the house to socialise….right?) and that seems to keep you well grounded and happy in doing something you are interested in. So why would your own father complain? clearly he is not a complete dickface so him not saying anything negative about it is actually saying alot. Had he been all in your face griefing you every time you brought the subject of gaming up, or even overly sarcastic, that opinion would be different.
Cheers for sharing this story :)
TooNu.
Below is just a snippit of my similar story.
My dad used to game LOADS and nowadays only finds time to sneak in a campaign of some WW2 textile turnbased strategy game in, or a bash at X. I remember he was well interested in PC gaming and Atari gaming all the way back to the C64 where he even made a game ‘Spell seeker’ (I think 5 people bought it, possibly more). This is more than likely the reason I game today. And game HEAVILY.
Going to his house on Saturdays with my brother watching him play Xcom and Panzer Generals, Red Baron, Dune 2 and Doom on the 486 and early Pentium never bored me and instead encouraged us to share ideas and talk about the plane models or tank models and old tactics that won battles in Africa or France. Dogfighting tricks in bi-planes that today, nobody gives a shit about BUT at the time it was great fun.
I remember he had to go away to some Mid-East RAF base or it was maybe to some oilrig to do the SAS computer programmes, he went away to these things for his job so often you lose track where he was at what time. Anyway, he had a shuttle PC that he had to use for some work and a copy of Doom was installed on it(must have been ‘93 then) which he played over the week, he came back for the following Saturday and was pretty excited about showing us it. We gave it a shot as you do and THAT was the turning point. No game before that gave me the shits and excitement quite like that game. I remember going to school and trying to explain how it worked and nobody beleived me…twats. Not many games today come out and captivate people and change everything that you know about your hobby quite like Doom did. Bloody horror violence, bringing familes together, weird.
yesyes Wolfenstein came out first, at the time we didn’t have a copy of Wolfenstein.
My parents, born in the beginning of the happy fifties, always encouraged me to fiddle around with computers and games but they never seemed to take much interest in it. Well unless you count the frenzy my dad went into after I accidently deleted the bookkeeping on his trusty old 386 that I used for playing Dune. I’ve tried to get them to try various games over the years without any success.. I think they ran out of interest after about 30 seconds and spent another 30 seconds in front of the screen just to be nice with me.
But in 2006 something amazing happened. I had moved out of town and my dad was on a business meeting in the same town so he stayed at my place. I had booted up GTR 2 and hooked up my Logitech G25 steering wheel and was in the middle of race when he knocked on the door. This time he was interested for real, asking “what’s that?” pointing at the screen. I explained a bit about the game and asked if he wanted to try. He’s quite into motor sports and said sure. I told him I would set a lap time and that he would have to beat it before I got out of the shower. We had made an reservation on a restaurant in town so we needed to be out of the apartment and on our way in no less then an hour. An hour later he was still glued to the screen and I was ready to use a crowbar the way Gordon Freeman does to get him to stop playing.
But in the end, the only important thing is that he never beat my lap time.