What's it like gaming with(out) your significant other?

The title says it all:

Do you play video games with your spouse or significant other? If so, how does marriage/dating impact your gaming experience?

My wife enjoys watching me play sometimes, but that's rarely the case. I've tried for years to get her interested in gaming to little or no avail. My biggest successes: Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Plants vs. Zombies, and Little Big Planet. It can be frustrating being married to a non-gamer for someone, like me, who's knee deep into strategy games and ridiculously long RPGs that may require a huge time commitment. That being said, I still get to play my games relatively unfettered.

My wife S-Ranked Borderlands before (long before) I did... and then played thru again co-op with me... She's working on Xillia right now...

So... good? :-)

My husband doesn't play all that much. He knows I'm really into videogames, so he'll sometimes ask me things about the game I'm playing and he seems genuinely interested a lot of the time, but he never really plays. It doesn't affect us much, really. He has his own hobbies (coin collecting and movies) and I have mine (videogames). We're pretty content doing our own thing, for the most part.

I sometimes get more enjoyment out of watching my girlfriend play GTA than I do playing the game myself, seeing some of the stuff that she can do in that game is hilarious.

My ex girlfriend lives with me and we play games together a lot, or one of us will play and the other will watch. Right now she's playing Rayman Origins for me on my Vita before I go to sleep, or she'll watch me play Dwarf Fortress or Warframe. It can be enjoyable to spend time with someone while playing a video game, just having someone to talk to or be there so it's not spent entirely alone. Though some games I would rather play alone.

My blowup doll ignores me all day.

Rotten bitch.

Girlfriend and I bonded over Gears of War, oddly enough. She thinks it's the greatest story ever told. I don't know why. I guess everyone's first quality game is the most important to them. We usually co-op on stuff like Gears of War and Saints Row. Sadly I feel like it's more of an obligation because it's a "couples" thing to do. I don't really get much enjoyment out of it. I like being alone when I play games. Great games can make me forget the real world and just inhabit the one I'm playing. I can't really do that when I've got the girlfriend sitting next to me or playing with me.

It was even worse when she watched me play the first few hours of Mass Effect 3. The early Liara interactions were painful for me because she was my Mass Effect Lady. It was just bizarre and I kept expecting the girlfriend to make some remark about it. Thankfully she didn't.

/rambling

My wife hates most games but shows slight interest in a few. Haven't had that one game that clicks with her mainly because the games shes interested in she can't play. Heavy Rain controls like shit and I never noticed because I've played games all my life and adjusted to the tank controls instantly, she could barely walk down the stairs. The Walking Dead she was interested in but by the time the next episode came out she didn't care so too long of a break I guess. GTA 5 she likes all the driving, so I gave her control and she didn't like the fact that she hit 3 people as she started driving and stopped playing.

Pretty sure she is a lost cause with games. At least she came around to my ty shows.

The only games we've really shared are bits in Ocarina of Time: Master Quest and Windwaker. She loved the guy going splihhhhssh in that battleships game Windwaker and everytime she hears the chest noise goes "Wha've you gohtt?" like I'm a dog or a baby. It's cute.

We did all of Broken Sword The Sleeping Dragon together which was fun. She did a good impression of Nico and still says "The door was securely locked" sometimes. I tried to get her into the director's cut of the first one but it ran out of steam. Sad.

Stuff she's actually played on her own is girly crap like Dr. Mario and Cake Mania. She was pretty good at Wii bowling at the start but then was overtaken by manly finesse. The 360 controller to her is an alien artifact made out of the dying screams of a dying robot planet. She won't even use it for DVDs. I've evened it out by not remotely comprehending the washing machine.

I semi recently built a home theater PC with with a little 7790 in it so the old lady can play her dumb adventure games and Sim City on the big TV in the living room instead of on her laptop. Finding time is usually not a problem. Between the previously mentioned dumb adventure games and a couple TV shows she has to watch, a couple hours of gaming a day is pretty easy to come by.

My girlfriend doesn't like games at all.

My girl likes games more than I do (Yeah, that's right. I got one of those now!). But I'm so damn busy, rarely have time for anything. We are going to play Portal 2 co-op this weekend. I can't wait.

My girlfriend plays games even more than me. She paints and plays games as hobby's, I have several other hobby's besides gaming and I'm also more busy with work and study, so that explains the difference. Otherwise, we're just as much into it. I guess I am a little more even, because I have a gaming blog, follow news closely, subscribe to a gaming site and so on. I also have all consoles, while she has somewhat less.

But yeah, it's cool. We just play games a bunch. I have a 27 inch monitor and a TV so we can each play our own games. Neither of us are big on multiplayer games.

@missacre: When the video game adaptation of that movie about coin collecting comes out, you guys'll have it made!

My girlfriend gets obsessed with The Sims a few times every year, and while it's not a multiplayer game, it's a ton of fun to watch her design buildings and yell at her Sims when they do dumb shit. (man the AI is horrible in those games)

She doesn't play much else, but it could be that she just has trouble grasping player movement in 3D space, so when we do play games together I'm usually the one doing the 'hard stuff'. Also, she gets REEEEALLY angry and screams all sorts of nonsensical expletives (fuckin'-cock-shit! is a favorite), but really, that's fun to watch too. ;)

Outside of Rayman and Pac-Man DX my significant other has very little interest in games and in a polite way often says she thinks they are a huge waste of time. I let her off as both those games are pretty damn good.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to find time to play games now though. It's only when she's out/asleep that I can spend more than 30 minutes on anything.

We recently played through Rayman Origins together. Sometimes it was... trying... but overall it was a fun time. She made me buy Rayman Legends. She also really enjoyed Heavy Rain (even though she got the worst possible ending, she really enjoyed watching me go through it and getting the best ending) and L.A. Noire. It's hard to game together because couch co-op seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. I'm hoping to get her into Diablo 3 on console, but overt fantasy stuff just isn't her thing, so I doubt it will happen.

@joshwent: There's 2 National Treasure movies already!

One day I'll let let you know. Until then I'll be crying into my pillow if anybody needs me.

My wife is a "get your significant other into gaming" success story, and it's a lot of fun. I enjoy watching her experience good games for the first time, its like getting to play them new all over again. Conversely, she enjoys watching me play games she's interested in but doesn't really have the patience or skill for yet (we were laughing at my pathetic dark soul attempts just last night). The difference in skill levels means most co-op is a no go, though.

My wife hasn't been gaming as much lately, but she definitely enjoys RPGs and shooters. We played coop through Borderlands, Halo, Gears, etc countless times.

My gf has ZERO interest in games.

which i quite like really because i don't like the shit soap opera's she likes (emmadale, coronation street, eastender those in the UK will know what i mean) so while she watches those on the ipad i can play my games.

Me and my girl play games pretty often. We love to play good/dumb/fun co-op games together and we spend a lot of time watching Giantbomb videos together as well.

It feels good. I love that I can share it all with her and even though we don't always see eye to eye on certain games it's always nice and reassuring that she'll be someone I can talk about/play games with.

She is not into gaming at all. I actually think she dislikes games a lot even though she won't say so to me since they're probably my main hobby. I've tried a bit to get her into gaming but with little luck so far. She's played Sims 3 quite a bit and likes that but I've tried getting her into GTA IV, which was way too hard for her, and Plants vs. Zombies which didn't really click with her.

Feels a bit like she thinks Sims is the only game she would enjoy. I want to prove her wrong and maybe change her attitude towards games to something a bit more positive. Anyone have any ideas or success stories of how to get your girlfriend into gaming?

@razzdrazz:

We play together sometimes. We are not married or dating.

WAY TO MISS OUT OUR DEMOGRAPHIC YOU MONSTER.

It's pretty cool.

My girlfriend's played Fable 3 about 12 times now, I don't understand...

My wife played the original Red Faction from beginning to end and then was done with video games.

My girlfriend only likes Angry Birds. So appart from some solo playing when she is occupied, anything else is waging a battle.

@blomakrans: Don't force it. With many people, even if a game/movie/album/whatever is something they really would like if discovered on their own, they won't get into it if it's forced on them. Also, The Sims is a pretty unique game, so even i she's into that, it's totally legit that other types of games just may not appeal to her.

One thing to try, though, is to find games made from any IPs that she might like. My GF and I are both huge Harry Potter fans, and were having a blast playing through Lego Harry Potter. She's really into it, but I guarantee you that if it was Lego Star Wars or Lego Indiana Jones (very similar games but with different IPs), she wouldn't like it nearly as much. But again, don't force it. There might be some other game out there that she'd love, but constant badgering could sour her to games altogether.

This is my experience with my partner pretty much to a T. I will say though that sometimes I do wish she did play games, as I play quite a lot of them.

My girlfriend plays as many games as I do. We've played a few games together, basically all of SWTOR, Borderlands 2, Saints Row 3, a bunch of the co-op mode in Mass Effect 3, Dragon's Crown. There's also a lot of games we'll play in unison, like our separate Sims games. Or when I decide I'm going to play a survival horror game she'll watch until I get lost and don't understand where to go.

I didn't get her into it, she was already a gamer when I met her. So I don't know what to tell you.

We have different tastes usually. I play through Saints Row with her because she loves it. We played through all of the Halo games together because we both like it. She watched me play The Walking Dead, I watched her play Heavy Rain, we tag-teamed Catherine. It all works out.

I consider myself good at video games, but when she's consistently performing better than me at co-op in CoD or Halo, it gets frustrating. Not because she's a girl, but because I can't handle that I'm slipping.

I have only ever played Divekick with my girlfriend and she loved it, she played as the sensei guy and laughed out loud everyone he would do a hand stand. Thinking about trying Rayman Origins with her next.

My girlfriend has very specific taste in video games, that being madden and GTA. She is surprisingly good at madden, but in GTA there are more issues, namely shooting. As most people who didn't grow up playing "shooters", she struggles with moving, aiming and shooting at the same time. I think its the cinema style storytelling and all the crazy stupid things you can do in those games that draws her in.

@acrimsonbullet:

I have a similar situation with my wife, she loves the L4D series and we tend to play 4-6 hours a week for the last 2-3 years now lol. The only other successful games I have got her to play is wow lvl1-90 and the lego games. She typically is only interested in the SIMS on her own and the origin humble bundle for sims 3 was a great gift to her.

The only constraint I tend to implement is that she tends to take criticisms extra hard while we're playing video games. While out side of that experience she's tough as nails, it's kind of weird.

For me it depends on the game.
Playing something like Outlast with another person there just ruins it all "So how was your day?" "Oh you know, it was pretty relaxed, had another review to write in the offic*scary stuff happens*e and, oh look out for that I guess, anyways, anyways, I had to write the review in the dark because the power went out for 30 minutes" ...

Other times it's super fun as well.

Similar to a lot of dudes on here. She wasn't into gaming at all when we first started seeing each other, except the Sims. When I bought my first Xbox 360 I bought 4 or 5 games to play, including Viva Pinata because I thought it would be something she'd liked. I was right, she S-ranked both Viva Pinata games eventually, but she also got really into Fable 2: I laughed when the guy earlier said his lady had played Fable 3 several times: My girlfriend has played fable 2 maybe 10 times at this point. Since then she's become a pretty confirmed game fan.

She only really likes 3rd person games though, she says she finds first person games too disorienting, but she did recently play through the first Bioshock and she liked Portal 2. She doesn't really buy games on her own initiative, with the exception of Lego games. She's bought and S-ranked all of the lego games, bar Lego Star Wars 2 I think.

As for playing together. We've only tried it with Rayman and Portal 2. Portal 2 was a bit of a disaster and I think we got quite grumpy with each other, but Rayman is a great game to play together. She watches me play quite a lot, like she watched me play Bioshock Infinite recently because I overtook her and she was finding it quite difficult. She doesn't like it when I watch her play, because I try and backseat drive for her and she gets annoyed.

My husband and I play games quite a bit. If it's a co-op game, like Halo or Gears of War, we play the campaign together. We've done this with all the Halo games, all the Gears of War games, Portal 2 and lot of XBLA beat em up style games, etc. Mainly, if it has a co-op campaign, we do it.

We also like different games. Our tastes don't align so much that we are always playing the exact same games. For instance, I have played all the BioShock games, Dragon Age Origins, Awakening and 2, Amnesia, Condemned, Hotline Miami, and all the Diablo games, just to name a few. He has played all the Uncharted games, StarCraft 1+2 plus expansions, stuff like COD and Black Ops, Assassins Creed and GTA IV and V. In those instances when we know a game is a watershed title and we are interested in the game, but not enough to actually want to play it, we will watch the other person play the game pretty much in its entirety. I am watching him play GTA V right now, and I also watched him play all the Uncharted games and many others. He has watched me play through BioShock Infinite and most of the Dragon Age games. It's nice because you get to see the story of a game that you wouldn't normally play, RPGS for him and 3rd person shooty type games for me.

There are also games that we play at the same time that we don't want to watch each other play. It is rare, but it happens. In those cases, we each get our own copy and we each play it in our own space. This happened with the Mass Effect trilogy. By 3 we were playing in the same room, we each had our own xbox, mine attached to the big screen tv and his was at his desk plugged into one of his two monitors, and we had a dark green sheet tacked up between the two of us so that we couldn't see the other screens and wouldn't be spoiled. I managed to finish it three days before he did... That was a hard few days. Then we sat and talked about it more than any movie or tv show. It was so much fun.

It would seriously suck if he, or I, didn't love games.

I watched her slowly accustom herself to Final Fantasy A Realm Reborn and by the end of the 2nd hour, she had lost track of time and was all "oh it's time for bed!" Most other times it's just her and me sitting on the couch while I run through some game she wants to see the story for but is too afraid to attempt beating it because "she sucks at games" (her words, not mine). That actually helps me out a lot. I end up paying closer attention to the story myself rather than trying to blitz through the game.