1. Unlocking the Joy of Gaming: Winning Hearts of Non-Players

Key Takeaways

• Pick games with simple controls and a design that will appeal to the non-gamer in your life.
• Try to get that person excited about playing the game, either from what you’ve told or shown them already.
• When you play, don’t do everything for them. Let them take the lead, get stuck, and fail, so they can experience the joy of figuring things out themselves. Only help them if they’re going to give up otherwise.

Not everybody in my life likes video games, but I’ve got a pretty good track record of getting them excited to play some with me. By picking the right games and choosing my moments wisely, I’ve gotten some non-gamers to fall in love with games. If you play your cards right, here’s how you could see the same success.

Pick Your Battles Carefully

I’m never going to get my mom to enjoy playing Call of Duty, but we had tons of fun together playing Wii Sports. This first tip is an obvious one: you need to match the game to the player. But it goes beyond surface-level esthetics.

Not only should you try to find a game that fits the sensibilities and has a visual appeal to the person you’re trying to play with, but you also need to consider the simplicity of the controls. If anything, this is the most important factor to consider when picking a game for non-gamers .

Even if my mom was desperate to pwn some n00bs in Call of Duty, the dual-stick controls would be too big of a barrier for someone who’s never held a modern controller before. I’d be much better served starting small and building up to more complex controls like that. Wii Sports is a perfect counterpoint because you barely need to think about the controls at all, as each game is styled after the real-world activity.

By the same token, my girlfriend wouldn’t have enjoyed Breath of the Wild if I dropped her into it, despite being drawn into the beauty of the world. The controls would have been too much, making the level of challenge much harder than it’s intended to be. But when I offered for us to play Overcooked instead, which you can play with a single stick and just the one button, she got obsessed with it.

Wait for the Perfect Timing

Once you’ve picked a game you want someone to play, don’t jump at them and try playing it straight away. Instead, introduce the idea of that game to them slowly. Bring it up in conversation, talk about what excited you about it, and start softly selling them on the idea of playing together. The idea is to get them to want to play the game, rather than just doing it to appease you.

If you can do so without spoiling any gameplay mechanics or story beats, try playing the game around them. Don’t force them to sit and watch you, but stick it on if they’re scrolling on the sofa next to you of an evening. If you picked a visually appealing game, it’s likely to catch their eye and they could start growing interested.

When you’re ready to try getting them to actually play, be mindful with your timing. Pick a moment when they’re relaxed, in a good mood, with plenty of free time. After they’ve already fallen in love with the game, it can be a great way to relieve stress. But if they’re not already a gamer, it’s not going to be what they wanted to do after finishing up a difficult day at work.

Let Them Take the Lead for Once

Whether you picked a competitive, co-operative, or single player experience to try, you need to make sure the person you’re playing with gets a chance to lead.

For competitive games, that might mean going a bit easy on them. Doing so can feel disingenuous at times, which isn’t ideal, so I tend to favor co-operative games instead. However, if you find a competitive game with simple controls that has strong balancing features—like Mario Kart‘s blue shell—or that is more based on luck, then it can work well.

I much prefer introducing non-gamers with fun co-op games , but if you do this, don’t rush ahead and do everything for them, while they trail along behind. Let them choose where to go or what to try, and you can simply act as the willing sidekick or be the muscle when you get in a spot of trouble. If the game has a clear “little sibling” option, like Gooigi in Luigi’s Mansion 3, be that character yourself so the person you’re playing with has more to do. You already like games, so don’t need convincing. Whereas we need this to be as fun as possible for them.

And if you’ve picked out an appealing single-player game , like Journey or Firewatch, don’t tell them exactly what to do. Sit back and let them discover it for themselves. But more on that next.

Don’t Spoil the Joy of Discovery

The most enjoyable part of playing games is discovering what’s around the next corner. Whether it’s a new section of the map, a twist in the story, or a unique gameplay mechanic I wasn’t expecting, these moments are what make a good game into a great one. But when you’re sharing a game with someone else for the first time, it’s much too easy to get over-excited and spoil that magic for them.

So if you’ve picked the perfect game and convinced someone to sit down and try it, the next thing you need to do is keep your mouth shut.

This will be hard. You’ll see them ignore the obvious, get hung up on a dead end, and spend far too long trying to achieve basic tasks. But if you persevere, you’ll then see them get really excited when something unexpected happens or they figure out what to do all by themselves. They’ll definitely ask you for help—we’ve all turned to Google when we’re stuck—but try to encourage them to keep figuring stuff out for themselves.

Of course, you don’t want them to get so stuck that they give up entirely, which is what leads us to my last piece of advice.

But Don’t Leave Them High and Dry Either

Although you should absolutely allow your non-gamers to explore, make mistakes, and get lost all by themselves—since these moments bring with them the joy of overcoming them. You need to keep an eye out to offer little nuggets of advice when they’re getting too frustrated to keep playing.

You’ll need to base this on what you know about the person. If they’re likely to give up too quickly and tell themselves they can’t do it, you might need to intervene a little sooner. Whereas if they’re stubborn and headstrong, they can probably put up with more irritation.

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When you do decide to help someone, be sure to just give them the bare minimum. A little goes a long way, so give them just what they need; you can always offer more help later if they’re still getting stuck.

That might mean suggesting they revisit a location where they missed a doorway, reminding them to check their inventory if they already grabbed something that could help, or defeating a particularly tough enemy for them if they can’t get past. Just make sure you go back to keeping your mouth shut again as soon as you’ve finished helping.

When you love playing video games, all you want to do is share them with other people. There’s no foolproof way to get a non-gamer excited about all games, but with such a huge variety of options you can get pretty much anyone excited about some games. It’s all about picking the right option, introducing it wisely, and letting that person discover it for themselves.

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