Pondering

Pondering

This time of year is a contemplative one for me. I tend to ponder a lot, though others might use different words for what I'm doing. My daughters came over last night and one of them poked her head into my office to greet me with "What are you grumping about in here?" She may have been right. I probably did have a pretty fierce look on my face as I contemplated how I was going to negotiate a compromise between the mined cobblestone to donate to the multi-player server's railroad system on one screen and the balancing game on the other screen of numbers in my bank's online app versus the items left on my Christmas shopping list. But there's a lot of thinking about the bigger stuff going on, too.

I've been taking stock of a lot of things. What I spend my time on and what's really important to me. And every time I turn around I bark my shins on games and how they interact with my life.

This year has been eventful; one long roil of births, deaths, weddings and separations. I have unlocked the "Empty Nest Syndrome" achievement. I had no sooner retrieved one son from Army than the other moved to Texas for work. Among the signs that I’m getting old, my daughters are turning 21. I'm seriously considering a career change, and I'm not the only one around here. Everyone seems to be growing or changing their life in huge ways.

Sometimes games are a burden. If you had told me in 2010 that I'd spend a large part of my gaming time in a blocky, little low-fidelity realm, happily doing chores, I’d have laughed loud and long. But here I am, still swinging my trusty pickaxe Wilson. Time and again it's confirmed my choice to stay out of MMO's — just managing my little bit on the GWJ multiplayer server is not easy. If I had a guild or a story to have to care about, I don't know what I'd do.

Sometimes games are pure joy. This year has been full of little surprises and big smiles that keep me going. Clicking through Steam I stumbled into Jamestown, which I had imagined would be some sort of old school adventure game a la Oregon Trail. It turned out to be an old-school bullet-hell that brought me back to playing the old Gradius cabinet in my college dorm's rec room.

I don't even have to be the one playing for it to be important. Some of my favorite memories of the holidays over the years are of talking and laughing with family and friends through the cutout over the breakfast bar while they play Texas Hold 'em. Hold 'em is rare in that it's probably one of the few games I don't and won't play. Their part is to play, and mine is to tease them about it and refer to it as Calvinball. They enjoy playing together, and I need plausible deniability so I can get stuff done while they do it. That hasn't changed much, except the dealer button is now my eldest's Ranger coin instead of that little squeaky turtle someone got for Halloween back in junior high. (Don't worry, the turtle took up an exciting new post as the marker for Big Blind).

And time and again I come back to all the connections that come from games.

One of those momentous events I alluded to earlier was a trip I took over Thanksgiving to meet my biological father. Outside of phone calls and letters, we really didn't know each other and were both stepping carefully around the minefields in each other’s life. But there was common ground in an unexpected place.

While there, I found that one of his wife's favorite things to do while chatting is play a wicked version of Rummy I wish I'd taken notes on. It involves three whole decks of cards shuffled together, and instead of just dropping points as you get them, you have to get an increasingly intricate and difficult combination of points out first. Over slices of her pecan pie, she kicked all our backsides into next week. I don't know if getting beat like I stol'd sumptin' is the best way to start a relationship, but through all the fumbles it built a bond that I hope we can carry with us.

Even solitary pursuits end up being part of being together. My daughter brought home a friend (I think he's her roommate's fiancé’s roommate, and I think she likes him, too) and while eating dinner, he moved between handing a Wiimote back and forth with her on Skyward Sword and taking a look at our the GWJ Minecraft server over my shoulder while telling me all about the one he plays on with his buddies.

I already went through the big poker set and made sure it's ready. There are new batteries in all the controllers. I need to test the Rock Band setup so it's ready for after the presents are unwrapped. But in all the fuss, I try my best to remember that it's not nearly as important which games we have put under the tree, as it is what you do with them once they're opened.

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But in all the fuss, I try my best to remember that it's not nearly as important which games we have put under the tree, as it is what you do with them once they're opened

Isn't that the truth!

A lot my fondest moments this year have been sharing gaming moments with my girlfriend: Birth By Sleep and 358/2 Days multiplayer, trouncing each other at Race for the Galaxy, D&D: Wrath of Arshadalon, breezing through Kirby's Return to Dreamland, our shared failure at Donkey Kong Country Returns, and lately helping each other with Skyward Sword.

Then there was the epic Thanksgiving Mario Kart battle between the two of us, my sister and her boyfriend, my younger brother, and the exchange student who arrived at my parent's less than a week before turkey time.

Thanks for sharing, Mom.

Games have always been a big part of how my family's come together (for good or ill). I'm glad to say that we're starting to admit it now.

Games are definitely the best way the kids in my family communicate. We used to play Melee on the Gamecube, but now that we're older, we play Brawl, Mario Kart, and occasionally some Wii Sports Original/Resort.

But definitely some of the best memories have been gaming with the family.

Thanks for sharing, great article.

I'm looking forward to spending Christmas day showing my wife how to play Plants versus Zombies on her new iPad while playing Skylanders with my son on the Wii.

Since high school, there hasn't been much "new games" ritual post-gift-unwrapping. If I go to hide in my room, I'm being "anti-social" and need to come down and spend time with the family. Before my niece was born, trying to plug a game into the system in the living room was met with "Chris, shut that off. Your family doesn't want to see that. Put on a Christmas movie instead." At which point no one would watch the damn movie. Now that my niece is born, it's doubly problematic. IF I have a game for the Wii that is not M-rated, then I might want to try it...only I can't, because my family will, again, insist that no one wants to see or play said game.

Until last year, when my mom was spot on the money with getting my Dad the latest Cabella's game. I tried the single player, and man did that ever suck. But the survival mode was actually a lot of fun. We passed the plastic rifle around, seeing who could last the longest or score the highest. My Dad got to laugh as I scored just a few points below his score, saying "I thought you were supposed to be the expert gamer!"

I wanted to say something afterward, about how, with this game, I was able to feel closer to my family than I had any Christmas in years, where the slightest gust of wind can cause someone to start yelling and cussing and ruining any sense of Christmas spirit. But I know my Dad, and I know his justifications. He'd come up with a bunch of reasons not to do it, or at least more often.

Maybe this year I'll get him the new Cabella's game at the last minute, and maybe the campaign will suck less so I can actually unlock more levels for us. Sad to say, though, we haven't really played the first once since last Christmas.

momgamer wrote:

While there, I found that one of his wife's favorite things to do while chatting is play a wicked version of Rummy I wish I'd taken notes on. It involves three whole decks of cards shuffled together, and instead of just dropping points as you get them, you have to get an increasingly intricate and difficult combination of points out first.

Sounds like Hand and Foot. A game my wife's grandparents taught us while we were dating and now has spread through my family as well.

Complete sets of 7 for 300 or 500 points depending on if they are clean/dirty (using wild cards or natural). 3s are negative 100/300. 2s and Jokers are wilds worth 20/50. If that sounds like your game, PM me and I can fill you in on the rest of the rules.

Christmas at MomGamers sounds like a lot of fun.