How involved in your Gaming hobby was your dad?

[phantasmalWordsmith]

Oh boy...This should be fun.

My first memory of gaming was my dad and big sister playing Sonic The Hedgehog on the Sega Megadrive...Genesis to everyone outside the UK, I think. I played too just not as well. Then we got a playstation and Lara Croft became a family project. The three of us would sit together and play, well they would work on it while I watched and got in the way. I was a kid.

And then the Xbox and Halo happened. Co-operative mode with Dad became one of my favourite activities, in which I died many times and emptied my bowels of bricks when I first saw the Flood. To this day, Halo remains my favourite franchise and my Dad's sole reason for purchase of an Xbox 360. Halo 2 and Halo 3, we completed them all. I always took the gun on the warthog. Fun times but as I grew up things changed to the point where I played Halo Reach by myself but we still went out together to buy it. He played it with my little brother though so, I think he was okay.

My dad played an active role in my development as a gamer but not much in my actual gaming anymore. He still asks me for advice on games since I spend more time on the internet and know where to look for info on new games and such.

And now, I think I need to play some Reach.

 

[Cowabungaa]

We used to play this RTS game called NetStorm together but that was the start and end of it really.

Nowadays he can't stand them but at the same time he constantly plays games on his phone. Honestly he spends more time gaming than I do.

 

[trollnystan]

Beyond buying my brother's first computer and later the one I shared with Dad, nothing. The closest besides that was perhaps when on my 9th birthday I ripped open my present to find the box to one of my brother's old games, which got me so excited-- until I opened up the box and realised he'd only used it to make it easier to wrap the shampoo and conditioner he got me.

Dad may have known next to nothing about internet culture, but he had trolling down pat.

 

[absulute]

Not at all. I tried to get him to play Mario 3 when I was a kid but he kept falling down a pit. Apparently he had an Atari way back when but that's it.

I miss him every day.

 

[Parkway91]

Has never had any involvement in my gaming hobby. In fact, still to this day continues to have a whinge when he sees me playing games and asks why I'm wasting my time. He was never into video games but his brother, my uncle, is into many many more similar things to me so I have a greater 'nerd' connection with him which is cool.

 

[BearShark]

My dad never got into the adventure-type games I liked, not the FPSs that my brothers liked, but he was always willing to play racing games (and absolutely destroy us in them).

 

[GloatingSwine]

Not at all.

He plays football manager and solitaire.

And he probably only plays football manager because I lent him premier manager 2 like a million years ago.

 

[neonsword13-ops]

He's somewhat involved. I think he played DOOM once, a long, long time ago.

He played the Mario Kart games with me growing up. We beat the Star Cup 150cc together in Double Dash.

Nowadays, he enjoys watching me play the Uncharted games and the Mass Effect games because they look like movies.

I should get him his own 360 with a driving wheel and every racing game available for the system. He loves racing shit.

 

[sunsetspawn]

The person responsible for the male half of my DNA thought gaming was for little faggots. He eventually almost killed me when I was 10 in a drunk driving incident which I had to report to my mom to save my own life because the drunk driving was an every-week event. Instead of getting help he never forgave me and never spoke to me again, and eventually died of pancreatic cancer.

So fuck that guy.

My Stepdad, on the other hand, was the gaming dude. He's the one that kept my interest in gaming alive into adulthood. Even recently he would invite me over to play games in his home theater, and would just ship me games from Amazon because I
"had to play it." I still remember coming home to Deus Ex:HR on my doorstep and being excited like it was Christmas because I loved the first two. Then he too died of pancreatic cancer, ironic that.

I actually worry now because my interest in gaming has waned without him around. I also wonder if my shit DNA will make me be a shit father.

 

[Wafflemarine]

Modern Warfare 2 was the only game my dad really got into it on my 360. Started his gaming career aiming rocket launchers at the ground in Halo. Eventually he beat the campaign for MW2 like 20 times eventually was going though it on expert and we would hear him yell GRENADE thinking he was warning the other NPC characters. Never got him to do anything multiplayer though.

I bet I could get him hooked on the Warhammer 40k games since he is addicted to Warhammer 40k lore like me.

 

[Mark Rhodes]

My stepdad occasionally played Madden, which I hated to watch, and let me watch him play God of War and Prince of Persia when I was 8 or so. He didn't have great judgement, but eh.

 

[Mike Richards]

My dad brought home Myst when I was like 7 or something and that's where it all started. We used to spend long afternoons on the weekends playing through it and the sequels together, taking turns on who got to be behind the controls.

These days he doesn't play as much but he makes a valiant effort every once in a while, particularly in Halo. He can't navigate worth a damn though, and he can never see the plasma grenades. I don't understand it, they glow bright blue, how can you miss that?

 

[spendle]

Back in '89, my dad would buy broken arcade machines, fix them, and set them up in our house. I was only 1 at the time so I couldn't experience it.

 

[Smiley Face]

My dad is vehemently opposed to my playing video games. My parents first got them for me when I was quite young - Pokemon and whatnot - they probably figured it'd give me something to do, and that it wouldn't really come to much. And at some point, he sort of realized I wasn't going to grow out of it, so he tried his utmost to resist it developing further - they were either too violent, or would rot my brain, or whatever. My mum was usually more reasonable, and I could usually get them to concede to allowing me to get games (not platforms) which fell in line with my previous experience (Zelda games, crappy movie tie-ins, etc.)

When I was 12 or 13, on vacation in Florida, I tried my luck and gave them some games I wanted when we were shopping, and they didn't notice. By the time we were back in Toronto, they couldn't correct their mistake by returning them (Halo 1 and Warcraft III). And from then on it developed - Battlefront, KotOR, then we got a 360 when I was 14-15, and by the time I was 16, I was getting whatever triple-A game piqued my interest.

My dad still thinks I shouldn't play video games, though his rationale doesn't really make much sense, and I think he sort of realizes that, so he doesn't push it. But he knows I won't stand for being pushed around, much less pushed around without good reason, and he doesn't consider it of sufficient importance to push it and jeapordize my goodwill. That and I've been an adult for a while now, so I definitely don't have to stand for it (not that I did before I was 18).

 

[xDarc]

Considering my dad was born in rural, post-war northern Italy in 1944, in a room with a dirt floor and a tub, not so much, no. I do remember he took me to a shop once to see how much we could get for my old NES games now that the SNES was out. The guy at the shop said 5 bucks each, to which he replied, "I'd rather bury them in the ground!"

 

[RaNDM G]

My dad sold our NES.

I still haven't forgiven him.

 

[Brotha Desmond]

Extremely. He was the one who was adamantly against it. I wasn't allowed to even to hold a game until seventh grade.

 

[Ryotknife]

He himself was not into games that much. Only during his latter years did he play a few. Mostly golf and board games like risk or battleship on the GameBoy Advance (he had the nice backlit one, I was using the regular one). In fact that backlit GBA was the last handheld I owned.

That said, he was supportive of my hobby. Within reason at least, I did get hooked on Diablo 2 for awhile more so than I should have. Thank god WoW wasn't around when I was a teenager. I remember when my friends were at my house for a sleepover, and the CRT TV finally died and we couldn't play Sega Saturn (shut up, it had some amazing multiplayer games >_>). Next day he came home with a new (and bigger) TV for us to play on. His nickname was gadget wizard among his friends.

 

[SillySam]

He still believes video games are about getting points and high scores.
So I'd say it's just about negative involvement

 

[Belaam]

My dad bought me my first "PC", a Commedore 64 and my first "console", an Atari 2600.

I think he looked at a couple games on each, and usually took me shopping for games on birthdays and the like.

However, he retired and moved 3,000 miles away back in '96 or so, and I have not seen him since.

I am slowly introducing my 4 year old daughter to games while trying to keep the 2 year old from diving into them to the exclusion of all else.