I’m not so much of a young’un that I live with my parents anymore, but around Christmas time I found myself staying there for two weeks, and trying to explain my WoW habits to them.
My parents’s generation (My mother is late 40s, my father early 50s) doesn’t, on the whole, understand video games very well. That’s not to say there aren’t a few who get it, and a few more who are wholeheartedly accepting, but my parents are not among them. I’ve been a WoW-playing machine for several years now, and my brother is a complete EVE-head, so they sometimes sort of put their heads to the side and stare at us, puzzled about how we got to be members of their family, since our idea of fun is so alien to them.
Anyway, at Christmas time my guild was just starting to raid. Christmas is a time when there’s lots of family commitments and things going on… but I’d made a commitment to the guild too. Both commitments are important, and it should be possible to balance them, but often when you’re at a holiday with family members, its the older members of the family who set the schedule, regardless of what other commitments I or my brother might have. They simply didn’t understand why it was important for us to know when those family commitments were so that we could schedule around them. After all, it’s just a game.
So we actually had to sit down and have a chat with the parents.
Here’s what worked for me: My father is a baseball coach. He coached my brother (the jock, not the EVE-head) from little league to college. He coached before that, and I’m sure he’ll keep coaching until someday he keels over. What I knew he understood was sports. I knew he would understand the concept of having made a commitment to a team. So I told him that raiding was a team sport, that without all the necessary players, the game couldn’t go forward. I told him that it was important for me to be there, as co-GM, I had the role of the team captain or coach. WoW is just a game, but so is baseball, and like baseball, other people depend on you to make their game possible.
Once I explained it in terms he recognized, he was able to see what was important to me about scheduling family events around raids, or at least knowing when family events were happening ahead of time so that I could plan raids around them. After all, he wouldn’t have the slightest problem working around a sports practice schedule. And as soon as he understood why it was important to me, he was able to work with me for the remainder of the vacation to make sure that family events and raids conflicted as little as possible.
Lately, one of my raiders has been consistently missing raids because he’s a high school student and his parents keep taking him out to eat right at raid time. I understand that if you’re still living with your folks, you’re going to occasionally have conflicts because parents don’t always understand raiding commitments. But just like you couldn’t blow basketball practice continually and remain on the team, we have to be able to count on our raiders to show up when we need them — or we’re not going to be able to keep them on the team.
I gave my raider that same advice — find a way to show them that although it’s just a game, it’s a real commitment too. Other people depend on your availability on a certain schedule. Put it in terms that your family understands. My family understands sports metaphors. Maybe your family would understand it in terms of commitment to a musical group or a club?
So if it’s been a problem for me and it was a problem for this raider, there’s probably more of you out there who are having the same problem. Maybe you’re having parental-aggro, or girlfriend-aggro, or husband-aggro. Hopefully you’ll be able to use this idea to explain it in more familiar terms, so that when you make a commitment you can keep it, and keep out of game commitments too.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I don't get why people think people your parents' age don't 'get' computers and gaming … WE INVENTED THEM, AFTER ALL.
ROFL. I knew that was coming. It's why I was careful to say that there are some who are very clued in… just not MY parents.
Some members of my grandparents' generation pioneered rock and roll, but it's my father's generation who adopted it while my grandma still listen to Perry Como.
(My grandmother has the same birthday as Roger Daltrey).
I think the comparison between video games and sports is a very good and interesting one. I had never thought about using that technique before and you're absolutely right. I was never a big sports fan but people over here are obsessed with football (soccer) and wouldn't blink about missing a family event in order to play a game. Of course say that about a WoW raid and they think you're weird!
I suppose one difference though is that video games have a lot of negative connotations associated with them. People think we just sit in a dark room for hours on end and never interact with anyone. Sports does have the advantage that it's more heathy and may lead somewhere (like scholarships or professional jobs) whereas video games are just pure pleasure. Still, they are both games and are played on a team and should be given equal merit.
That being said though, it's wise to keep everything in balance! Don't neglect friends or family over anything
My recent post Where’s My Box?
Most people who play sports aren't ever going to get a job in it, and really not that many go on to play at a college level… it doesn't mean it's okay to skip out on practices at the high school level either though.
I'm sure it's not a perfect comparison, but it did prove to be a way that I could talk about it with my parents in terms they already understood.