What games would you put in a Video Games 101 course for non-gamers?

My girlfriend didn't grow up playing games and therefore never learned a lot of the skills we take for granted, like how to manipulate two joysticks, face buttons, a D-pad, four shoulder buttons, a touchpad, a gyroscope and clickable analog sticks simultaneously. She loves simple stuff like Bejeweled but gets frustrated playing anything much more complex. She made it through Journey and right now she's playing Abzu, and those both give enough breathing room for someone like her to casually pick things up, but even those require a surprising amount of dexterity when viewed through a non-gamer lens.

So my question is what's the Couch to 5K-style equivalent for games? Like...

Mario???Call of Duty

Edit: just to be clear, I was not seriously suggesting she play Mario, then one other game, then Call of Duty. Just a hyperbole.

Robotron. Nix COD.

Maybe something like Pokemon? Call of Duty seem tough to me.

I would start with 2D platformers and move your way up. CoD is probably not a good way to introduce a newbie into games. The recent Rayman games are a pretty good start.

Ski Free

Cool Spot

QBasic Gorillas

Edit: And she's okay with this? Good hand-eye coordination takes a long time to master. If she's happy with bejeweled, why not stick to bejeweled?

Actually, if you want someone to get into 3D movement, Portal would be perfect as there isn't /much/ in the way of timing required. If you play Portal 2 co-op, then that would help.

If Mario's good, follow with Link to the Past. More dimensions and worth the effort.

Sort of like that indie game that introduced things as you went on...

Evoland

Journey is the first video game any video game newcomer should play.

Wii Resort & Wii Sports

I think Mario, Zelda (Link to the past & Ocarina or Windwaker) , Portal, Gears or Uncharted, COD4 and Pokemon gives you a pretty good overview of the ways you control a game and how different genre's play out. Maybe add a telltale game like The Walking Dead. Diablo 3 also seems like a pretty easy game to roll in and feel powerful in.

Also, is the guy above me a french bot? 2 days old account, Acheter Pokemon Soleil = buy pokemon sun

I feel like this could be explored with different types of games. Basically, I think the main issue is movement. Particularly with a third person adventure game, you have to 1) Move the camera, 2) Move the character, 3) Shoot/Fight stuff, 4) Jump, run, and/or dodge to get you around the environment better, and 5) Interact with the environment (Getting into cars, pushing a rock out of the way). On paper, you are just moving a character around and interacting with stuff as needed; it's not rocket science, but it can be cumbersome to actually do it.

So if I were to do a Videogaming 101 thing, I would start with the basics of a Journey or 2D Mario. Then I would move to more complicated games that aren't that difficult to control, like an XCOM style strategy game or some type of JRPG. There's more systems in place in these games than a game like a Journey, but as long as it isn't realtime, you can pause and take a moment to process everything and then go through the controls however the person needs to do so. I would have a more bare bones puzzle game or adventure game somewhere in there. Mario 64 or Super Mario 3D World might be the best primer for moving around in a third person, 3D world. At a certain point, I would go to a game like Life Is Strange. That game combines story interaction and puzzle solving within a third person adventure game context. You have to get used to moving the camera and character around more, but there's still no combat. Moving onto third person shooting, my gut says start with Resident Evil 4, because 1) Yo, that game is awesome, and 2) You can only aim or move; not both. This may not work in practice, but I think RE4 might be a better teacher than an Uncharted. For first person games, I would start with something that doesn't have any combat, like The Witness or Portal. For something a little more engaged, I would pick a game like Halo. With Halo, you can play the game co-op, so the person isn't lone wolfing everything, you can turn the difficulty down to help reduce the challenge, and the game even has the "Look up" tutorial at the very beginning to help the person get comfortable with the basics.

With this full-proof, perfect plan, anybody can now play any videogame that has ever existed.

VideoGames 101 would start out with things such as pacman & tetris then moving onto things such as Super Mario bros to show off where I feel, alot of people started their gaming memories. After that I would show off the next gen of games such as pokemon red/blue and Dragon Warrior, along with maybe FF3. After those, I would move towards sport games such tecmo bowl along with gran turismo. After those, i would bring in Spiro the dragon, crash bandicoot, Gex, etc.... from the PS1 era, moving into ps2/xbox/gamecube would be pikmin, smash bros, Metroid prime, Splinter Cell / Metal gear, halo. After those come the ps3/wii/360 and those bring about the uncharted, Mario Galaxy, legend of zelda twilight, mass effect, bioshock, skyrim. Once they have experienced those I would bring them into the new era of games with such games as Witcher 3, MGS5, GTA5, Fallout and Minecraft. Once the Normal games have been finished, I would warn them that not all video games are meant for everyone. I would then bring out such games as Demon souls, Dark Souls 1-3, BloodBorne, Meatboy, BattleToads, binding of issac.

Mine would simply be a brief history of gaming via the games that I felt were able to impact me while growing up and finishing with the games that I felt gave me incredible joy while also getting extremely angry, frustrated and almost breaking my controllers / keyboard & mouse many times.

Call of Duty is useless. The storymode is set-pieces not really teaching anything and the multiplayer is just run and gun, again not teaching anything.

Super Mario Maker could be nice if it is an option. It's also great to play together. Why not just ask her what kind of games she want's to play? There is no reason to learn everything, no one needs to or knows the inner workings of every genre there is. Let her decide the path with you as a guiding hand.

Cool topic. I guess it would depend on the genre. I had to do this with my then-non-gamer-gf, now-hardcore-gamer-wife.

I started her on a lot of SNES and Gamecube titles for the basic genres... Mario platformers, Smash with fighting games, Kart for racing and Pokemon for RPGs. Then she graduated to "mixed genre" and more complicated genres of games. Like Zelda and Metroid. Eventually she got to know traditional 2D tournament fighting games, arcade and simulation racers, shooters (first-person and third-person), tactical and simulation games, and everything else on Xbox, PlayStation and PC.

I've seen a lot of nongamers stop at the casual level. She just kept going and going and was hungry for everything I fed her, sex jokes aside. There's not one genre she dislikes and is now better than all of my friends I grew up with that are long-standing hardcore and old school gamers.

I started writing out a list and then gave up. Academically, you want to chart a historical through-line but there's also genres to touch upon. It gets out of hand quickly. You could shorten it by beginning with the first games being constructed out of oscilloscopes by some bored DARPA types and then progress more into how this morphed into a commercial escapade. Touch on how this was poorly curated and led to the crash and then go into how the modern industry has taken shape.

Heck, depending on what territory you're in, the crash doesn't even need mentioning. We had Jack Tramiel, Alan Sugar, Robert Maxwell and Clive Sinclair trying to land a computer in every household whilst that was going on.

Not sure about the beginning of this 'course', but in the later stages, Dark Souls, XCOM and Destiny should be part of it. Mass Effect before that.

For introducing first person games, I think maybe something like Half-Life 1. I seem to remember it having both a tutorial that covered the very basics (like "looking" and "crouching") and a slow start (you're controlling Freeman for quite a while before anything demanding like combat or platforming happens).

That was probably the first FPS I played and I think it did a decent enough job getting me up to speed.

@hellbrendy: this seems to be a common theme among some people here but I'm not forcing her to do anything. Occasionally I'll recommend a game to her I think she'll enjoy despite not playing games, like Journey or Abzu. She's generally happy to play them but sometimes the controls are simply too much. Like Flower. I thought that'd be a hit but she found the swimmy controls frustrating to deal with and I can understand that.

Occasionally she says she wishes she could play games well because then we could share the interest or play more multiplayer stuff, so that's a motivator for me to figure out a good progression. She has lots of friends who really like games as well. We started playing Overcooked recently, and she likes that game a lot because you're not manipulating the camera or anything, but then it's an issue of speed.

But basically it just gave me the idea of how do you introduce someone into games in 2017? She likes the idea too and is very curious to hear what people say. Just want to clear that up for anyone who thinks I'm somehow forcing her to abandon Bejeweled and start playing CoD or whatever. Believe me, I know CoD is not the game for her.

Portal would definitely be in there for writing/level design/world building

My wife loved the new Rayman games and she's terrible at games. She stayed up late and finished the second one without me. :-(

Dwarf Fortress!

Seriously though, I'd start with something simple such as Tetris, the Super Mario Bros. games or maybe even Kirby. No camera control required, not too fast and only requiring you to manipulate a d-pad and two buttons.

I can't speak from experience but I bet Kirby Super Star or Return to Dreamland would be good. Neither are overly difficult but there's a lot of fun experimentation with all the powers and so forth. Also, both are multiplayer to boot!

I think those new Rayman games, Origins and Legends would be great in exhibiting the iteration of design and aesthetic in platform games which is still one of the easiest genres of video games to comprehend conceptually. While non-gamers might get more novelty out of the more exploratory style of games a la Journey, Abzu, Gone Home, etc., I'm of the mind that more skill based games are still far more indicative of the what the hobby as a whole has been like for many decades.

EDIT: Dang it @sinusoidal beat me to this answer by 15 minutes. Lol

Bejeweled is a fine game

I think if she really wants to get into modern gaming, get any game with dual analog controls and put it to easy mode. Older games don't have the same standardized control scheme that most games have today, but any game she would find interesting should have a casual mode to get used to the controls.

I think the way The Witness introduces concepts slowly and non-verbally would be a really good introduction to general gaming. It's a game that largely leaves you alone after introducing you to the controls (which are really simple). It should also help make her get accustomed to first person movement. On top of that it also it's incredibly non-linear and allows you to see an ending without touching too many of the game's more difficult puzzles.

I think a game like that where she's free to explore, learn to navigate a 3D environment in first person, and can do it all at her own pace while learning about the ways a game can teach you it's mechanics would be great.

I'm not sure starting her off with retro games like the old mario stuff is the right call. The way I see it there are two possible reasons a person might enjoy such (technologically) antiquated games: 1) They played them when they first came out and were state of the art or 2) they are familiar with modern games and can thus appreciate the historical significance of early influential games.

If the endgame is, as you imply, giving her the requisite skills to play modern input-heavy games like COD and access to consoles and platforms were not an issue I would recommend starting with 3D platformers. Sidescrolling platformers are a different skillset that won't help that much in getting into contemporary 3D games. Furthermore I would avoid the earliest ones like Mario 64, which are actually pretty challenging, in favour of later kid-friendly western ones like Spyro and Banjo-Kazooie.

If on the other hand the idea is to give her a historical overview of gaming, as implied by the phrase Video Games 101, I'm all for starting with Super Mario Bros.

I get where you're coming from, but if I were to take this hypothetical course I would most definitely drop out if I had to play The Witness.

Minecraft on a console is a really chilled way for someone to get used to moving a camera around, especially if you play on peacefully as you don't have to worry about mobs it's just a gently explore, gather and build loop that you can take as much time as you need in.

The common issue that people run into when first starting is to play an fps on easy, when easy is not really designed for people who still haven't mastered camera control. In my experience new players will spend half their time looking and the ceiling or the floor, and invariably get killed a lot.

Honestly she just has to stick with playing somwthing. Even a five years old can learn how to use a joypad, and they learn it by sticking with it. She has to push through and get some muscle memory in her hands. So I would not pick games based on how hard or easy you think the movements would be but rather WHAT interest her in terms of characters or story. Also, I would try not staying with her the whole time over her shoulder. Show her the game, explain some of the controls, and then go busy yourself with your own task - like web browsing. Let her try and fail as she works it all out.

I can only imagine if I never played a video games having someone shove "The Wintness" or "Bubble Bobble" or "Madden 2017" under my nose. None of those would interest me for more than five minutes. It would be better to give me something that is interesting to me, be that from story or characters, rather than how it plays. If I was just starting out, I'd want INVESTMENT in what is happening on that screen.

Does she like horror movies? Then maybe Until Dawn or RE 7. Does she like dressing characters up? Don't laugh, much of the investment wRPG players or even "The Sims" players get for their games comes from spending an hour making their character...that is priceless buy-in. If she likes american football than Maddens a good place to start, or FIFA if she likes football elsewhere. Hack, if she likes taking upskirt photos of anime girls get her one of those games! No judging. She might wnat a good story above frantic gameplay? So Life is Strange, Heavy Rain, Oxenfree, or Gone Home might interest her where you do navigate a character and pick up items but it all at their own pace?

I guess it depends on how much the person wants to learn and more critically what they want to learn. You could learn a ton just by playing formative classics from the arcade days for a just a little bit.

Stuff like Pac-Man, Pole Position, Super Mario Bros. etc to understand basic genre concepts.

But if the goal is to just learn how to use a controller, things like Journey or Telltale games are probably the best way to ease into it.

Then when she's comfortable with those, maybe you can move into things JRPGS like a turn based Final Fantasy-esque game or RPGS of Skyrim. While those games may be too huge, they do require you usually to use most of the buttons. It wouldn't be important if she finished them or even got far into them at all, it's just a way to get to learn where the buttons are in a fairly low stress environment.

Minecraft may even be better as mentioned by other posters above.

Ideally you just want something that lets the person take their time, requires them to use a lot of buttons so that their hands and fingers are forced to be in the right grip and it becomes muscle memory (e.g. I can play games with Xbox button prompts on a playstation controller easily, because I know what they cross too without thinking) without being stressed by fail states.

Now I think about it, oddly enough Hitman would actually be decent for this too.

@voidoid: I agree. I'm not trying to give her some historical overview of games; I'm just trying to find a logical progression to get her better at the general coordination skills and understanding the "language" of games. For instance, when she was playing Abzu the other night, the first thing she tried to do (after learning the controls) was try to swim into the darker water that you or I would look at and immediately think "OK there's a clear line where the water becomes darker meaning you can't go that way otherwise it'll turn you around, Star Fox-style." I let her do it to learn the rule on her own: she swam into one side, got turned around, swam into the other side, got turned around, then said "so I can't swim into the darker water?" It's not that she's dumb or anything; it's literally just that we take for granted how to read and interpret visual cues like that.

But yeah, she has no interest in retro games. Still, after reading through the comments here, I think the next game I'm going to get her to play (she's totally cool with this) is Pokemon LeafGreen. I asked her a series of questions (do you like red, blue, yellow or green more? Plants, fire, water, lightning? This screenshot or this screenshot?) to determine that LeafGreen is the right one for her. She won't have to worry about dual analog sticks, real-time actions or general coordination, really. She can just move around, have fun collecting cute animals and naming them, etc and play it on her own time without me there (gonna get an emulator for her laptop). That'll introduce her to broader game concepts like XP, leveling, a party, structure, maps, where to go, random battles, etc while giving her a safe control scheme. Plus, a bunch of her friends love Pokemon so they're going to be jazzed she's playing it and encourage her.

What comes after Pokemon though is still up in the air. Really depends on how she takes to it.

@monkeyking1969: Yep, you're totally right about not hovering over her. She definitely has said she feels slightly more stressed if I'm there—not because I'm sitting there telling her what to do, judging her, or anything like that, but simply because she doesn't want to screw up in front of me. So typically I give her the option of "would you like me to hang out with you with you play or do my own thing in the other room?" Sometimes the former, sometimes the latter. If I'm there with her, I'll ask her whether she wants me to offer help or wait for her to ask. Again, sometimes former, sometimes latter. And yeah, in general, I'm only ever recommending games I have a strong conviction she'd enjoy for one reason or another, and almost always because of the topic or theme of the game and not because of how it controls. Like Overcooked we played because it's simple but it's about cooking and it's something we can play together. She likes it but sometimes struggles with how fast-paced it gets.

I've told her that learning to play games is quite literally like learning a language. It's a physical language, sure, but the principles are very similar and a lot of it is intellectual: how to read the environment and cues on where to go or what to do, for instance. First thing she did in Abzu was swim toward the out-of-bounds dark water—which you or I would look at and recognize as such and avoid because we've played Star Fox—so she got turned around twice before learning the rule. As she moved forward, the game hadn't presented her with an objective, so like a lot of non-gamers, she's used to the idea that games are stereotypically about having a clear goal, score or some other metric of success, so she occasionally asked "so what's the point of this game?" and I needed to explain that some games just present you with an experience and it's not about a score or whatever, but reductively, Abzu's goal is "move forward." Sometimes I'll point out where she needs to go and she'll ask me how I knew that instinctively having seen exactly what she's seen, and so I explain to her the visual clues the game gives. I tell her that it's an example of how once you learn the language, it all comes together: the swimming becomes beautiful and freeing rather than a struggle, you understand intuitively where to go next rather than search without a clue, etc.

It's really just fascinating seeing games from the eyes of someone who never grew up with them and doesn't know the language. But anyway, the next game she wants to play is Pokemon LeafGreen, which I think she's really going to love. Or at least I hope so.

@saddlebrown: That's probably a good choice since the DS ones don't emulate that well. I'm not sure if any of the technical skills you can learn from Pokémon can really translate to Abzu or any non-RPG. However, if she develops a fluency with a simple game like that I suppose it will give her confidence in her ability to be competent at a game, which when I think about it is probably the first thing you need. Just don't forget to teach her how to save the game!

Point and Click adventure games. I'd say they're much more relatable to a non-gamer. They're typically story and character focused which is more in line with someone who's more used to TV shows or books and only require a single input and allow the player to go at their own pace.

@saddlebrown: I read you! Super Mario Maker is awesome. She can learn the inner workings of a platformer by actually making one her self. As for games you two can enjoy together, Portal 2 har really great multiplayer (walk her through the single player first though, so she has the basic knowledge). Actually, start with Portal since it's more or less the best game ever made. Then move on to Birderlands 2 with her as Gaige. She can be a great and helpful partner even when the player isn't that good if she is leveled in the left skill-tree. That game might be a bit "much" for newcomers though.

my wife's intro was call of duty black ops zombies mode late last year. i spent a long time trying to find a intro game that wasnt too hard and everyone told me not CoD, it starts out slow enough that she had time to get the hand of the controls. she still isnt the best, but our friend group plays it as a party game and she is slowly getting much better.

@voidoid: Oh no worries, LeafGreen is actually the GBA one so it'll emulate really well. I dropped off Pokemon after Silver/Gold so the DS ones aren't even on my radar, honestly. But yeah, it's not going to teach her any of the complicated dual joystick skills or whatever but I figure it might actually be smart to build up to that instead of throwing her from one to another and trying to brute force it until she just doesn't like games at all. I think Pokemon is a game she'll have fun with and it can teach her lots of game concepts and how to "read" the language of games: where to go, what to do, how to figure out how to get there, etc. in a less frustrating format. I just want her to have fun with a game without having to worry about fighting the game just to control it.

Plus, when you think about it, you and I (or least I did) started out as kids with games like Pokemon that weren't a challenge to control and got to build up a knowledge of how games work before manipulating the camera became a thing. I got to cut my teeth on 2D games, then N64 (one joystick and light camera control) before moving on to the PS2 and dual joysticks. Trying to force her to skip those years of prep to play dual joystick stuff was probably overzealous on my part.

@hellbrendy: Ah, you're right! I kind of wish I hadn't sold my Wii U last year now. I could even build her levels to play to teach her specific stuff. But yeah, I'm definitely hoping one day we'll be able to do stuff like Portal 2 together but I think right now I'm going to take a step back and stop forcing her from one frustrating dual joystick game to another that she's going to spend her entire time fighting with the controls and not enjoying herself, and instead find games that are easy to control and will build a legitimate love for gaming first. Then by the time she picks up another dual joystick game, she'll understand the concepts much better, have better coordination and control, and will actually be motivated on her own rather than a thing she's happy to do for me, you know? Like even now, it's really fun watching how much she loves Bejeweled. She's already put like 13 hours into it in two weeks. Similarly, we both got super addicted to playing Crossy Road together. To me, that's the goal. Games she truly enjoys even on her own.

My girlfriend is very similar to yours when it comes to games. Her favorite game of all times by a huge margin is Child of Light. She loved the visuals, the story, the battle mechanics and the simple party system. I heartily recommend it even though it requires uPlay.

This seems to be more like a get someone up to speed with playing games and find out what they like. here are some that might worth trying out, mostly to gauge interests and are fairly "easy" to control.

Life is Strange. Story telling, branching story, light exploration and problem solving gameplay mechanics

Civ 5, pre expansion. Turn based so no need to worry about controls, half number crunch half just roll with it based on feels, different playable civs are different yet familiar enough to offers depth. The expansions are fine and good, but they are made in response to what the game needed at the time. Vanilla Civ 5 while not the best of its form is easier to get into, although I think there are some good UI updates.

Stardew Valley, there's an in game clock, but it really isn't that punishing. It is more about managing time, resources, and get better at it as options become available. The combat and fishing portion could get slightly hectic, but gets easier with resources. Also sort of caters to a little of build/make your own fun type of games.

Skyrim, the older TES are a bit too cumbersome in leveling mechanics to pick up quickly. The rather loose control could be a blessing or a curse for someone still trying to get a hand on it. Reception to the exploring aspect of it is a quick way to judge interest. FO might be a tad too demanding on the shooting, it might build expectation/reliance on V.A.T.S. or similar system. It is interesting and should be experience, but not really the norm.

Diablo 3. Loot progression style game with fairly easy controls, however I have only spent limited time with it. I have also heard good things about Path of Exile, but have never tried myself. The Borderlands series might worth a look as a first person shooter counterpart.

Koei -whatever- Warriors game...yes I might be a bad person for recommending this, but it is simple and straight forward at its core, perhaps to a fault for the more experienced videogamesman, but I have seen people who doesn't play game picks it up and "gets" it right away. There is very light strategic gameplay element to it. The item, weapons, and character progressions in the latter halves of the series is an interesting mix of action and number driven gameplay. The problem (besides the obvious!) is that technically speaking the later warriors games are usually better than the previous, but in the latest titles they really went up their own ass with weapon and item fusing mechanics so it might be a bit confusing.

As a different option to the already stated more modern games, if you have access to them I think the world of old arcade games makes for some excellent introduction into gaming. Most of them may not have control schemes that are directly movable to console/PC gaming, but they do make for a good training in dexterity and understanding the vast visual output we get.

I would say something like The Witness. The puzzles won't be easy, but the controls are and a game like that could help lay down a basic control scheme that most games follow

ill put in a vote for those pacman championship editions. reaaaally addicting and gets pretty crazy after a few cold beverages.

@themist997: She liked watching me play The Witness but she said she'd probably get frustrated playing it herself, which is totally fair because even I eventually stopped playing it. In general though, I think that's a great suggestion especially if the person likes puzzles. Super safe environment, slow pace, no crazy reflexes required. In terms of just getting someone familiar with how to navigate in first-person with the dual joystick controls, this is a real winner, I think. I also tried getting her to play Firewatch for the same reason but ultimately she fell off because she lost interest in the story and didn't like the characters all that much. The whole experiment has been a fantastic case study in why games aren't as popular as passive stuff like movies and TV and why a company like Nintendo is probably right to keep hammering away at the barriers to entry. She liked Super Mario 3D World a good bit, for instance.

@lead_dispencer: Funny enough, I did get her to play DX a few months ago. She really liked it but it got too fast for her to keep up with. Requires really deft reflexes and a good sense of how to interpret and follow the correct path. She watched me play it and was basically like "I can't even keep up with where you are anymore. What is even happening?" which is of course one of the things I love most about DX. She did love playing Pac-Man 256 though actually. We played that in multiplayer and it ended up being a much better game for beginners because it's slower, less crazy, has co-op, etc. She also liked that it was by the Crossy Road folks because we both got hooked on that for a solid month or so.

Lot of really good suggestions from everybody in this thread. It's super interesting seeing where people go with this and what games come up the most.