Obsession, pro and con

Following up on the theme of game playing in my own little family, my 75 year old father was in town last week, and I had the great pleasure of introducing him to the Nintendo Wii. We played Big Brain Academy, which he thought was mostly annoying. He didn’t like being tested, I think–which is in contrast to my daughters, who love the game. We tried Madden Football, which was amusing for him, but only because he liked watching me play–just as he likes watching football, although he thinks real football is still more fun to watch.

(Note for EA Games: My dad could only play Madden himself because of the “family play” feature that makes the game simpler, but his big complaint was that as a result he couldn’t really control the action in the game.)

The game that turned him on, though, was good old Wii Tennis. We played one set together, and then he spent–I kid you not–two days straight practicing his tennis.

But three interesting things came of this little obsession:

First, it gave us a chance to play a game together in a way that we haven’t been able to for years. My dad doesn’t play any computer games at all, and it really was a lot of fun–not only because Wii Tennis is fun, but because it was fun to play with my dad. And certainly it shows once again the power of the Wii to open up gaming to new demographic groups.

Second, after two days, he went back to doing other things. The most obsessive part of the obsession seemed to be over–although to be fair, he did say that we should under no circumstances get him a Wii for the holidays as he would never get anything else done.

Third, it occurred to me that if a teenage boy had exhibited the same pattern of behavior, we would assume it was a problem, rather than a normal way of interacting with a game–that is, to become really interested in playing for a while before returning to a more normal pattern of behavior.

I’m sure there is nothing particularly unique about this experience–I’ve heard many stories about how the Wii offers a first opportunity for someone to play computer games with a (son/mother/spouse/grandfather/etc). But it is a nice illustration, in condensed form, of some of the “patterns of participation” in game play–that is, of how and why people play games the way they do.