This weekend’s Big Topic appears to have been non-gaming friends and family, and how you tell them that you spend hours out of your week staring at a screen with 24 other people trying to kill Internet Dragons.
The entire thing kicked off with A Sunnier Bear’s post on talking to non-gamers about gaming, which covered the entire gamut with lots of real-life examples, from Sunnier’s mum and her increasing understanding of WoW, to how Sunnier actually landed a job through blogging:
“It came up again the other day during a job interview. The guy who was interviewing me asked what skills I had outside of programming. I told him I like to draw and write, blah blah blah. He asked me what I write and I told him it was a video game blog. I didn’t really go into much more (other than saying I was thinking of moving it toward a User Experience in Video Games blog, because User Experience is pretty valuable in software design too). The last thing I wanted was to tell my potential boss that I spend countless hours on this soul-sucking video game.
Funny thing is, I think mentioning my blog helped quite a bit in this interview. Turns out several of their employees run programming blogs, so it’s a popular thing there. I got the job; maybe I got it because my blogging makes me special? Who knows.”
I’ve heard blogging recommended in several places on the internet as a way to stand out during job interviews. Particularly for technical jobs, it’s a major draw. And as Sunnier proves, even if your chosen workplace might not be gaming-friendly there are ways to introduce your hobby positively.
Anne Stickney at WoW Insider found Sunnier’s article interesting, and this morning wrote about her own experiences introducing family and friends to her hobby, particularly her 83-year-old father –
“My Dad came into my room one night while I was raiding, just in time to see my guild finish off heroic Halfus Wrymbreaker. I remember the look of intense curiosity on his face as he watched, while my guild was cheering happily in my ears via my headset. He absorbed the candy colors on the screen, the little elves, orcs, tauren and other assorted players scurrying around a glittering corpse, and asked, “So did you just kill that thing?” I said yes, and then he asked me about what I was making for dinner the following night, the technicolor celebration forgotten.”
As usual, Anne writes a very interesting and engaging post – worth reading just as much for her descriptions of her father’s attitudes to ground-breaking things that have happened during his lifetime. Her anecdote about his seeing Snow White at the cinema when it was first released was particularly entertaining!
Meanwhile, Windsoar has been sharing her home with her mother, of late, which prompts her to write on a different aspect of non-gaming people’s understanding – getting them to understand what it means when you’re in a raid –
“I’ve owned a headset for a number of years, but my preference, and the kind that I don’t have now is the simple one headphone model. I liked it because I could still hear my game without the volume turned up to some ridiculous level. However, now that I’ve got a roomie, I’m really glad that I own a pair that actually has a full headphone set-up because it’s obvious that I can’t hear a darn thing.
It’s also a firm visual reminder that I am not available. If the house if burning down, the person can come make theatrical hand gestures until I get the thing off, but boy, wouldn’t you feel silly if you did all that hand-waving just to say we’re out of milk?”
Windsoar’s guide is brief, practical, and to the point, and concludes this weekend’s flurry of non-gamer posts nicely. After all, it’s lovely if your roommate/parent/dog understands what you’re doing when you’re swearing at the brightly-coloured pixels, but it’s a good minimum if you can persuade them to leave you to it!
What have your experiences with non-gaming friends and family been?
