So my mom has been saying for awhile how she wished she could play Hogwarts legacy, and my older sister just replaced her gaming PC. So my sister sent her old pc to my mom. Nothing crazy, but meets minimum system requirements! My mom is now kind of speed running learning about gaming and it’s been amusing. I just think these are adorable.
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She complained that she couldn’t find the game for sale for PC anywhere, she could only find it for XBOX and PS. She was looking on amazon, and I had to point her towards steam, and help her setup an account for steam.
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She happened to purchase it while it was on sale and she was super confused why it was randomly on sale! Had to explain how steam works. She’s disabled and the $60 was the extent of her fun money for the month, so getting it on sale was a huge deal to her.
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Complaining at how long it took to download the game off wifi when she was ready to play RIGHT NOW. She kept asking if we could use an Ethernet cable to make it go faster, but her PC was like 40 feet from the nearest jack and we didn’t have a long enough ethernet cable (No I wasn’t driving home to my house to look for one, and no I wasn’t buying her one. Love you momma! You gotta wait!)
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She realized she hates mouse and keyboard, so used the money she saved from the sale to buy a little controller from walmart.
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She talked about how much she likes that because she’s on “story mode” she can skip puzzles/challenges she thinks are stupid. Considering there are games I never beat as a kid because of a specific mini game/challenge I couldn’t beat, I resonated with that. Back when we were kids if there was a quick time event you couldn’t beat, we quit the game!
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A few weeks later she talked about how she was super happy to finally find a youtuber that would give walk through/tips/advice on how to do things in a not annoying way. The one she likes are basically “Here is a 30 second clip of doing this specific thing in this room”. She is not a fan of 30 minute lets plays with intros/outros.
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Complaining about long load times between rooms, and quests that make her go through multiple loading zones. No comment, she’s just right to complain.
All her revelations were super relatable and I just thought it was cute that at an older age she went through modern gaming transition in a few weeks, and hit on emotions we all basically hit.
Give her Skyrim and show her the Nexus and see how long it is before she’s a furry.
Uhh maybe I’ll have her try Stardew Valley next…
Then again, I’m certain there are furry mods for Stardew valley as well. No where is safe from them.
There’s also Spiritfarer although it can be pretty heavy emotionally. But the gameplay loop is on the easier side.
Whoa, cool it! Maybe going the route of emotional decimation for someone new to playing games is a tad much.
Start with the light-hearted stuff first, then ask if she enjoys having her heart ripped directly from her chest, then suggest “Spiritfarer”.
I’m still shocked when I see people promoting Skyrim. In 2024.
Move on, guys.
Edit: my issue with the way people talk about and recommend Skyrim isn’t about how old the game is. I love (good) older games.
Skyrim is barely playable without third party mods, and it’s always been exceedingly mediocre.
Of all the games to recommend in 2024, Skyrim? It’s not even the best game in it’s own series… Maybe not even in the top 3.
I assume I shouldn’t play Portal or retro games either? If someone is new to gaming, the whole catalog is available to them. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it isn’t worth playing, especially since the system the mom has isn’t top of the line and may handle those games better than new ones.
You’ve misunderstood my comment. I love older games. Comparing Skyrim to Portal series is absurd and insulting to Portal.
Skyrim has always been extremely mediocre at best. The way some people still talk about it, you’d think it was the greatest game ever made. It isn’t even the best Elder Scrolls game.
It’s barely playable without mods.
Very wholesome. Thanks for the share!
If it would help with loading times you could buy her an SSD for her birthday/Christmas present.
True! Could slowly help upgrade her little pc if she keeps playing games.
Love to hear it! My mom is in the same age range and still isn’t a gamer. I did have her play Journey a few years ago and she enjoyed it, so that might be a good option.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is the steam family library. It’s been a while since I first set it up, so I hope it’s still as useful as it was back then, but it was a great resource to share games since you mentioned she was on a limited budget.
From what I remember as long as you aren’t trying to play the same game she can play from your steam library.
Family sharing is still up and works (besides that time once every 1-2 years i have to disconnect and reconnect the accounts for some reason). Though access to games isnt based on games, but the entire library. If Player 1 wants to play a game shared with them by player 2, P1 can only play as long as P2 isnt playing anything themselves (though this can be circumvented by P2 going offline to play)
My mother got really into Stardew Valley for a while at about the same age. And like your mother, she didn’t like the keyboard and mouse. She ended up going with a USB SNES controller knockoff and was very happy with it.
She got into Minetest for a while too. Preferred creative mode, mostly.
