A story from the other side

If you're following me on Twitter (and there's no reason you shouldn't be!), you probably noticed a little tweet about me playing ODST's Firefight with my wife last night, a rather momentous event. Well naturally, I was telling my coworkers the story, about how she even wanted me to mention it in my blog, when I got to thinking...maybe she should mention it in my blog. So without further ado, I give you our first guest writer...ABlogger'sWife!

In the grand scheme of life, there are many things I’m good at. I'm a good listener, creative cook, and usually pretty funny. However, I somehow lack the ability to reconcile what my eyes are seeing and where my thumbs are moving. To appease my husband, I took up the Xbox 360 controller last night. All he asked of me was to do some skillful button-mashing (which I'm usually pretty successful with: I even beat my brother-in-law at Mortal Combat once by pushing various buttons as fast as I could, much to his 15-year-old dismay). Apparently last night, for the first time in my life, I felt the urge to be successful at a video game. I wanted to kill anything that crossed my path, and impress the husband who was expecting very little, and reasonably so. Perhaps a long day as a social work intern can do that to you (but don't tell my supervisor that).

ABlogger'sWife ends a Brute (with some help)

Anyway, back to the whole eyes and thumbs thing. No matter what I did or how focused I was, I always ended up facing a wall, shooting my own shadow, or being attacked by some Brute behind me. Every time I try to look up, I end up facing the ground. Every time I try to turn left, the sensitivity of the buttons leaves me spinning, or again facing a wall for some reason. I guess I'm good at that...to look at the bright side.

So here's a story from the other side, from the perspective of a wife who does want to spend time with her husband and who knows that will sometimes mean engaging in video game play with him. Gamers, you've had a lifetime of thumb sprains to reach the level you're at today. We wives, girlfriends, etc. just want to spend some time with you. Resolution? Someone needs to create a voice controlled video game that's virtually hands free. When I say "look behind you and shoot!" the game should do it for me. Or maybe we can make a compromise - the voice activation allows you to tell the game where to look, but then your thumbs can do the shooting. That sounds fair, doesn't it? Then husbands, maybe it won't be such a chore to get us to spend some quality time playing video games with you.