Mom and Dad Gaming, thoughts?

[Garem]

So a few buddies and I were talking about doing a video series about a mid-50s mom and/or dad with little or no video gaming experience and recording her/his experiences.

So before I explain the envisioning of the project, note that I am open to ANY suggestion. Anything can be changed, and you're all creative people and I value your input.

We don't want to do the "haha, look mom sux at video games, lol" at all. We want this to be a more intellectual approach, but draw comedy from reactions and conversation. I have two ladies in mind right now who are hysterical, so their personalities will drive the content.

Another possibility is going through a quick-history of games, so that the parent goes through video game history starting with Super Mario, then Link to the Past, then Starfox, then... you get the idea. There are technical problems with that (we'd have to use ROMs...) but it's possible. We also want to be sure to capture the interest of our player! I'm not sure a mom would be all that interested in Super Mario or Link to the Past. So we'd need to find relatively simple, linear, and engaging games. So...

What games would be interesting? I'm leaning towards popular narrative games, like Bastion (also easy to play!), Skyrim (on rails, under my direction to avoid 30000 hours of gameplay) and BioShock series. We would edit down to major scenes, funny parts, etc. but I hope that the whole game gets played through.

I have considered taking a political approach - almost all of the non-gamer adults I have in mind are right-leaning and well-educated. Many are religious, too. Would you be more or less likely to be interested in content because of the underlying political perspectives?

I also want to address in the videos why adults that age don't play games, what they liked about these games , what was off-putting.

What mediums would be best? Twitch recordings, Youtube, or written as an article with screencaps or short video clips?

Others have done similar things, but I've not been impressed with the personalities involved. Most are kind of "lol mom sux at games" which, again, I want to get away from.

At this point I'm rambling. Please chime in!

[goate]

What games would be interesting?

Katamari Damacy.  Totally.  If you haven't played it, do so, and you'll see why.  Easy to pick up, humorous, subtleties that are picked up over time.

[Random_White_Guy]

I would advise you take them from the golden age of Donkey Kong into Centipede before taking them into Mortal Kombat 2 and Street Fighter II Turbo.

The big thing I'd say is try to hit a lot of genres. THere's survival horror, there's adventure/zelda stuff, there's FPS games, etc.

It'd be neat to see how they stack up genre to genre for their prefrences and similar, and some things may surprise you. I love the idea of if more older adults and other people becoming addicted to games like Mortal Kombat, etc with all the gore to show it's not just angsty teens who enjoy that kinda stuff.

I remember when I was 10 I made my mom motion sick the first time I tried to get her to play Goldeneye because it was so beyond any videogame thing she had ever experienced. Yet at the same time it was my Dad who got me into videogames and still eclipses me in more of the RTS realm.

It's probably the biggest cultural gap of our generation, so it'll be definitely neat to see how things play out and share your results!

[Bearic]

My dad played video games before me, so I find it sort of funny. He used to fall asleep playing old rpgs all the time.
 
 They have old school controllers that work through usb ports too, if you're looking for the same feel but on a pc, for the roms too - fail that, there's always usb controllers too that work like ps3 ones.
 
Got to through a hack and slash in, to make them bored with those after two hours. XD

[Moonlighter]

Dark Souls.

[Ebok]

What is the scale of this project?

Are you looking at putting in 100 hours of gaming on video? 1,000? Even if you took a vet through half the top-rated games of video gaming history, you'll have an astronomical project.

Perhaps you should clarify what your specific aim is. That being, the final GOAL boiled down to a single question to answer that you're looking to access. A thesis. This will drastically improve our ability to fill those hours with the best of the best gaming.

[VanillaPudding]

Resident evil in the dark

[CondorHero]

Resident evil in the dark

Followed by Amnesia.

[Garem]

BTW, thanks for feedback everyone. I convinced the friend of mine I'd hoped to do this with to go through with it - so long as I buy Corona Light with some limes. =D

Unfortunately, she's at the beach for the next week and a half or so. I'll keep y'all posted when I get things together. Should be fun!