How I became a gamer as an adult

I didn’t play many video games as a kid. There were a few years that I played Pokemon and Donkey Kong on my pink GameBoy, which I referred to affectionately as my GameGirl. I remember my brother was gifted a Playstation 2 console, which my parents said he should share with me, but of course he never really did.

In High School, I saw the dark side of gaming. My brother would stay up throughout the night playing Halo on his Xbox. He was very good at it, even entertaining the idea of becoming a professional gamer. But the game really consumed him. Not getting sleep at night meant he was sleeping through a lot of his classes. At this time, video games seemed like addictive drugs, and I was happy to stay far away.

My brother eventually stopped playing Halo, and to my knowledge, all video games. He found that they distracted him from his career and educational pursuits.

When I started dating my now husband, I saw from his example that video games can be used responsibly. He enjoyed playing, but also did household chores, worked out, and had time to watch software engineering talks on YouTube and answer questions on StackOverflow.

I started becoming interested in his hobby when I saw him playing Stardew Valley. It looked different from any other game I had seen before. Compared to first person shooter games like Halo…