Growing up with gaming siblings.

Velmeran

For those of us that have grown up with a sibling that gamed with us, how much do you think this effects your choice in games? Personally I rarely play solo-player games, unless there is a multiplayer part of it also and I just want to see the storyline and get some practice in. I also tend to prefer Co-op play when possible because my brother and I would always get into fights when playing against each other growing up, not to mention the language used by us would of gotten us grounded well into middle age if our parents had heard.

The reason I bring this up is since I'm in China for a while and while I haven't met many gamers, lots of my students love games. But when you ask them which ones, they are all single player or adversarial, almost no co-op. One reason is that in China you don't visit each others house's or do sleep overs, you would meet up somewhere and do something then got back to your own house, hence Arcades here having some co-op games, but still much less then fighting/solo driving games.

I also notice this trend in their computer games, lots of solo-player RPGS, FPS's that are non-co-op, just a general lack of playing together. Now many say their MMO's are where they "play together" but well, you've played Korean MMO's, they generally support ALOT of solo grinding compared to others, WoW is hopefully killing many of those off so that Korea can make a game that looks as good, but doesn't suck so hard.

Anyway, what was it like for you guys and girls, did you have siblings to play games with, do you find yourself drawn to the same kind of games you use to play, do you prefer co-op more then your friends who didn't have siblings?

SwashbucklerXX

My sis and I both gamed while growing up, but we had PCs rather than consoles, so we didn't get much co-op stuff. We took turns instead, or watched the other one play and heckled.

My husband and I would love to find more co-op games, especially since with competitive games, one of us is invariably better at the game than the other, so we get bored quickly. There just aren't that many co-op games out there in the styles we like to play. We love the Tales series for allowing one of us to control a character during the battles. I also like that Super Mario Galaxy is going to allow one player to assist the main player... perfect for us because my spouse doesn't like platformers much, but he can help me out while I do the main platforming.

subedii

Baldur's Gate series allowed co-op play IIRC. Not sure if you're into D&D RPG's, but they were (and still are) very good games.

Used to play adventure games with relatives and friends. It was always fun to see if people could come up with the solution to a puzzle we'd just run into.

Rohan

I'm the eldest of my siblings. For years it was me and my two sisters, who only had a passing interest in games (for example, they'd play Flimbo's Quest or play with all of us together on Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun on the C64 years ago), so it was just me for years. My brother was born when I was eleven, and I got my first computer at the age of twelve, so there was a large gap between myself and someone who would actually play with me and want to play as many games on their own. As we grew up he certainly did become interested in games, though only really when I got the N64. We played Perfect Dark together often, we played loads of Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64, and I would buy him games for Christmas or his birthday. Then, years later, I got into pc's...

We had to share a room up until I was sixteen and he was five, but then the family moved to a rural area and we had seperate rooms (which I much preferred, having been by myself for eleven years before he came along, and you can imagine how much a sixteen year old appreciates having to share a room with his five yar old brother). I would begin upgrading my pc's over time, and as I got better at building them I would take spare parts and give him a pc to himself. The reason, I told him, was so that we could play games together over LAN, because I had just begun to do that with a friend, and I loved it. Years later, we still have four-player LAN's whenever we can. Anyway, the first few pc's weren't particularly powerful, so we didn't get to play many games together. But even when they got more capable, we never played many games together... we shared the Internet over a dial-up connection (yeah, it was bad), but other than the LAN's we had with friends, we never really played together.

He became obsessed with music and playing bassist in his band, and I moved away for a few years. He's now dropped out of the band to focus on joining some division of the Irish Air Corps. But it's only now, after so long after we played Perfect Dark, that we're playing a game together - Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. It's a tough bastard of a game to play, and we've only ever completed one mission, but I'm beginning to look for more co-op games now, because playing together is good. I have a 2mb broadband connection that I share with him, so we can play online with the other two friends who come to the LAN with us. Yay, technology!

Anonymous Robot

My brother and I used to go through beat 'em ups together all the time.

I also fondly remember watching him play games like Final Fantasy VI and VIII, as he was older than me and could wrap his head around the mechanics better.

YodaTuna

My little brother only plays Halo :x

I bought him a Wii, Zelda and Okami last Christmas and he never beat Zelda and never even started Okami.

KungFu

I grew up as a little brother to a big sister. I was primarilly the gamer, but she played the games a lot too. We always played Mario Kart and Harvest Moon and etc

Now we're both in college an hour away, but we still share DS friend codes and play stuff. For years we were both into World of Warcraft. I recently quit that though.

And I relate you ya, OP. I have always preferred multiplayer games or games that at least had a multiplayer feature. I rarely find myself actually playing a singleplayer game to the end these days. . .

Pooch

I have two brothers who both play games (I play more than them mostly, though) and I prefer playing single player games a lot more than multi.

I used to make m brother play as Tails if he wanted to play Sonic 2 with me.

Local H Jay

I mostly played Super Mario world with my younger brother on the SNES.
Last time we played together was on Halo 2 split screen last month.
Last time we did it without arguing was waaaay back in Halo 1 Co-op.