r/videogames • u/varnajohn • 1d ago
Discussion / Question Playing co-op with a non gamer is such a good lesson in patience, we take so much knowledge for granted
I tried to get my gf to play something with me a few times but she never wanted to until she ran into some girls on TikTok talking about It Takes Two and other co-op games hahaha. She has never been a gamer in any sense of the word, so ofc I jumped at the opportunity when she showed some interest and got the games set up for us.
Playing Split Fiction now (we finished It Takes Two) and we already have a few games she wants us to play next lined up. Water Me & You when it comes out, a similar co-op adventure game she found on TikTok which looks pretty good, it also has a bit of base building from what I’ve seen which sounds cool. And she really wanted us to play Orbitals but that will have to wait, we don’t have a switch 2 yet and it's an exclusive.
When she was starting out, she struggled with the basics, which I expected, moving around with a controller is not intuitive to someone who hasn't used one before. The struggle for me was keeping my mouth shut. Every time she missed a jump I would have to stop myself from telling her how she should have done it, because she only wanted me to help when she asked. I could tell it was frustrating for her when I would just tell her what to do, and it was frustrating for me to watch her struggle with something that looks so simple to me and not being able to help.
I realized it was just my decades of gaming experience, I was so used to the tricks developers used that I could pretty much instantly understand what we needed to do. You don’t realize how much ingrained gaming knowledge you have until you experience something like this. Literally NOTHING is obvious to a non gamer, you know how people joke about the yellow paint in modern games, well for her she wouldn’t even follow obvious cues like that, cuz she wasn’t used to them.
But I learned to keep my mouth shut and let her try as much as she wanted to before she asked for help, it took some willpower but it was so worth it, cuz now she is slowly turning into a bit of a gamer and I am overjoyed.
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u/lydocia 1d ago
I can't be the only person who doesn't like the dynamic that she wouldn't try to play a game for you, but she does for a tiktok trend.
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u/Inevitable_Tea_6824 1d ago
Thank you because OP mentioned Tik Tok at least twice and I felt like I was unreasonably bothered by that considering the context.
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u/FizzyLightEx 1d ago
I don't think it's out of place for couples to respect each other's hobby and not want to partake in it.
I would not be interested in watching reality shows
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u/lydocia 1d ago
No, it's absolutely fine not to share a hobby. But if I said it was important to me that my partner tried gaming and they wouldn't, BUT they would be all over it because of an influencer?
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u/who_took_my_pseudo 15h ago
To me it just seems like she didn't know what to play so she wasn't interested and then saw it takes too and decided to give it a go, i don't think the source matters, just that she saw something that she found interesting and it made her want to give it a try.
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u/lydocia 15h ago
Eh, I don't know. I guess only OP knows where this falls. Personally, I would find it very weird if my partner wasn't interested in my hobby enough to look into it and try out a few things, but suddenly did it for a tiktok trend. Or vice versa. But we aren't social media people in the first place.
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u/Happy_Ad_2575 1d ago
As someone who's gotten many nongamers into gaming, I'd say it's all about how sell it. You gotta choose a game that seems accesible, simple and connected to their interests. She may have had wanted to play but feared sucking at it. Many people, especially women, have never played anything so they grow up thinking they're bad at it. As we know it's all about repetition. She may have seen those TikTok looking for options that were appealing to her so thay she could share with him
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u/CowKingHisoka 1d ago
Well it depends on what OP tried to play with his gf at first. Gaming is so varied even if OP gave some good recommendations it just might have never gotten her interested. I know it takes two is a great game and relatively friendly to beginners and after that the hobby finally clicked. So without further context this just seems excessively judgmental of a couple we know nearly nothing about.
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u/schmoolecka 1d ago
Appreciate this. I just got done playing it takes two with my brother. We’re both gamers and even though it’s not a particularly hard game I kept thinking that it would be rough for a non-gamer given how the abilities change with every level. Glad she’s still enjoying it! Sounds like you have some fun coop adventures ahead.
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u/varnajohn 1d ago
It's not even the abilities changing. It's all the ingrained gamer knowledge you pick up over the years that non gamers don't have. So its not obvious to them where to go next and things like that. They don't pick up on that kind of contextual gaming information you get when you play something, it's really interesting once you notice it.
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u/pretty-77 1d ago
watching someone miss the same jump 10 times and pretending you're totally fine with it is a whole different kind of boss fight
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u/screenavenger 1d ago
I think because I was just so happy that my girlfriend was actually playing a game with me that I had absolutely no trouble patiently waiting for her to complete some jumping parts after two dozen attempts.
The only real struggle is when she comes up with a plan to solve a puzzle based on a misinterpretation and I'm 100% sure it's not going to work, but I pretend she's onto something lol. So I follow her instructions, then I act surprised it didn't work and I 'come up' with the actual solution. It is kind of cute though.
And for real, I realized how much for granted I took running around with my character while also controlling the camera, then add something like jumping into the mix. That does NOT come easy to a first timer!
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u/Ok-Guidance-5608 1d ago
On the ONE time my dad agreed to try to play videogames with me, I tried to think of a good game we could poke around in together. Went with Portal 2! Slow, methodical, puzzle based, no real threats, no consequences.
He couldn't get through the first tutorial rooms because he couldn't get the hang of dual stick movement, and when he did start to, he got severe motion sickness.
Not just the knowledge, there's subconscious conditioning that's needed for gaming too.
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u/BlueTemplar85 1d ago
Yeah, you don't start with 3D games. And when you do, probably go mouse & keyboard before controller.
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u/nero-the-cat 1d ago
There's a great YouTube series by Razbuten where he has his non-gamer wife play games and it's definitely eye-opening realizing how much we understand so easily just because we've seen it 100 times before. We speak "the language of games".
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLordXx8iNEyStcX_WzqM0JCpiJYgqhinc
This is exactly the sort of thing I think about when people are complaining about tutorials and handholding. Many people do not have the same amount of experience as you and they need the assistance.
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u/OneHamster1337 1d ago
A lesson in patience or a lesson in suppressing rage? Guess the line is pretty think sometimes hahaha, me and my bros used to literally throw down with each other at the slightest provocation. Still remember those times fondly