*QotM is a virtual ice-cream sundae dreamt up by Later Levels

Giving and receiving game recommendations is one of the many chocolate sprinkles that makes being a gamer so tasty; that first “Have you played…” through to the final “…gahh, I don’t want spoil it, just go and play it” is a magical time where we stumble and fumble around the difficult process of articulating the why & how of enjoying something. Likewise the receiving of this, often garbled dessert, is rewarding purely to watch someone that into something and doubly-so if you take the recommendation and run with it to the point of giving it a go yourself. Who knows, maybe you’ll even have the chance to pass this Eaton Mess of a conversation on to someone.

I’ve been both parties in this banana-split of an exchange many times, however it has been a while since the person I was talking to was not a “gamer”. Giving advice about games to a non-gamer is something that I’m aware I have a skewed perspective on. That’s not to say that a non-gamer wouldn’t appreciate the games I play… because I think that my tastes are wide & varied; it’s just that gaming is such a big part of my life that I’m unsure exactly which aspects of gaming may or may not appeal or be accessible to someone not familiar with the medium. For example, I once (some years ago) got asked when playing Mario “… but how did you know that the mushroom was good and not bad?” … and you know what? I couldn’t answer them. The mushroom moves along the floor and looks similar to the goombas, so why is it good and not bad? … see? There are so many aspects from control schemes, pickups, visual or audio cues, and accepted conventions that we, as gamers, take for granted.  Continue reading “QotM*: What is the Best Non-Gamer Game?”