Nerd Mentality

Dating a Gamer: How to Deal

Posted April 11th 2006 by Daisy Garcia.

I've been playing video games for as long as I can remember. When I was ridiculously young, my mother started me on the Atari 5200, herself a former player of the Atari 2600. Ms. Pac-man and I became good friends until I was introduced to Q*Bert, a facinating little orange furball who stole my heart. When Nintendo announced that it was coming out with a console for the American market, I begged my parents for months to get it for me. The following Easter my basket contained the NES, back in '86 when consoles came packaged with two controllers and two games! From that point on, all I ever asked for Christmas or birthday presents were NES games. Forget the dolls, I just wanted to game. Throughout elementary, middle, and high school my free time was spent playing every fun game I could find. I still play, though less frequently what with all the time-consuming activities on my plate, but my DS allows me to squeeze in a few minutes each day with my favorite hobby.

So it was no surprise that when I hit that teenage boy-crazy age I tended to like boys that were into gaming, which wasn't exactly an exclusive club. Every single boy that I knew was into video games and when they found out I was, one of two possible situations would arise:

1) They would flat out tell me that girls couldn't – not shouldn't, but couldn't – play video games and I'd have to prove them wrong, thus killing any possible romantic feelings that they might have due to me so sorely bruising their ego.

or

2) I'd automatically fall into the friend zone.

Most of you know that the friend zone is a deadly trap for anyone wanting to date another, so I digress. From that point on, the majority of my friends were always guys. We'd get together and simply order a pizza and having a game night fest. Sometimes I won, sometimes not, but never once was my gender ever an issue after I proved that I could play, despite the fact that I had ovaries.

However, through my dating life, most of the guys I dated were merely casual gamers. None of them were really all that interested in gaming and thought it was pretty childish that I still did. Losers. Only one of them actually owned a system, but he never wanted to play with me which led me to believe that he must've sucked horribly. Then I found out that I was right, and that was the end of that. While I had always wanted to date someone who's favorite passtime was the same as mine, it never worked out that way. Fickle as it may sound, I couldn't stand the thought of dating someone who just couldn't keep up gaming wise. Other girls I knew thought I was absolutely crazy for turning down the most eligible guy in school (senior class president and captain of the soccer team, and what a dreamboat!) for the simple fact that one night while at a mutal friend's house after the winter dance that I let him take me to, I watched him play Dr. Mario and he was absolutely terrible at it. The next day he asked me to date exclusively and I flat out turned him down for his lack of gaming skills. Tough maybe, but how could I or any self-respecting gamer even consider going out with someone who was so awful at such an easy game?

Fast forward quite a few years later... well not that many years later! My gaming slowed with adulthood on the horizon until it became more of a rare occurance. Then I started dating someone who was as in love with video games – most particularly with Nintendo – as I had always been. You might know him.

Something that I always wanted, yes? Yes. But was I aware of what the term "true gamer" really meant at that point? Not at all. For most of my life, I was probably one of the best gamers amongst my circle of friends. So I'm not sure if it was merely just my slowdown on gaming or age or what have you, but compared to Jared, I suck as hard as the class president from my highschool! The first time we ever gamed together, we played Smash Bros. on the N64 and I got my ass handed to me. Begging for a rematch, it happened again. And again. And again until the point where I threw my controller down and said that we couldn't play Smash anymore. And suddenly I felt exactly how all of the guys that I'd ever known, friends or whatever, probably felt. I was nowhere near on the same playing level and it drove me crazy. After a few weeks, however I did beat him on occassion, but it was always followed up with a super-quick owning on his part. It's to the point now, that I for the most part can't stand playing with him unless we can play on the same team.

So here are some points to remember in case you are currently struggling with your gamer partner or if you're considering something as inane as dating a gamer.

The No-Spin Zone

Dating a gamer entails a lot of things, first and foremost that no matter how important the subject matter is, it's damn near impossible to get them to tear their eyes off of the screen to talk while a game's on. Sometimes I'll just start saying completely random and totally insane things just to get his attention and my response is always either a grunt or an "uh huh," "mmhmm," "yep," etc. I could say the house was on fire and I might as well be talking to myself. It's times like those that I can completely understand the frustration my parents must've felt whenever I zoned them out while playing Mario.

How to deal:

Once in awhile, if I'm feeling rather mean, I'll simply stand in front of the television until the controller gets put down long enough to give me a response to whatever my question was. However, the release of fantastic games on the DS has just about ruined this little manuever for me. I think I've thrown things before, but usually that just results in a quick duck and a "Hey, watch out!", all the while the eyes are still glued to the screen. None of the above works while Jared's in the middle of Resident Evil 4. Maybe if I donned a zombie outfit I could get a little eye contact. Or perhaps one of Ashley's...

Basically, you're trying to communicate with someone who's communication lines are irrevocably jammed. And just like you would with a television that's having trouble getting a signal, the only recourse is violence. Jar them out of their video game stupor with close-range high-pitch noises, by blocking the screen howver you can, or resort to outright violence, if it comes to that.

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