Wife is New to Gaming

[Wombatula]

The most important thing when it comes to gaming success is mindset. It sounds like your wife has a horrible mindset and that's the main reason why she sucks so bad.

She is telling herself that she sucks and can't get good at these games and she is right. If she keeps thinking that way, she won't get good.

Try to get her to understand that everyone sucks at first. She just needs to focus on learning how to play. Once she learns the controls and the rules of the game, it all comes down to decision making. If she can do that, she should quickly improve.

I think you nailed it directly. As proof, I offer the fact that she absolutely destroys me and all of our friends and family at any fighter she lays her hands on. She even does very well online. She says all she does is button mash, but I know that's not true because she can rip off combos that make me just want to quit. She has also blown my Typing of the Dead records out of the water. I've told her there is no reason she shouldn't be able to apply the same skills/mindset to other games, and she's going to give that a try.

I just picked up Ikagura today and we'll be playing it tomorrow. I'm hoping she'll see that there is no reason she can't kick ass in other games too.

[Wombatula]

Just to update, my wife has already made tons of improvements and has also become addicted to Star Craft (the first game). In fact, she's even decided to join me on my quest of playing all the best games from every major system from the Odyssey to current gen systems. We're planning on starting a blog to document the journey, with both of us reviewing the games and systems we discover along the way. I think it'll be a really cool way to get her even more into gaming, and also her inexperience with gaming might provide a unique perspective when writing for our blog.

Thanks everyone for your ideas and encouraging words. This thread has really helped both of us not to get discouraged and it has paid off in dividends. Now I just need to get her to join the forum and everything will be gravy.

[MrPopo]

You sir have officially won the internet.