What the Fran

Being the worst video game player

I'm comically bad at all video games. I'm pretty bad at all games but video games are where my incompetence really shines.

This has several components. Firstly, I'm often not interested in doing what the game wants me to do. This started young: on Age of Empires I would make a cool map and wall one enemy guy into a corner. Then just farm. I've mentioned before how I play Skyrim as a mushroom picking sim.

I make liberal use of cheats for resources because I want to have fun not grind. Games have gotten a lot better at that with different modes. I don't always switch off all the enemies. Maybe put them on passive. Factorio is hard enough without those little shits chomping through my stuff.

My physical dexterity and hand-eye co-ordination is real bad so I can't do anything with quick reactions. I used to hand Tony Hawks off to my wife to unlock the levels so I could actually play the damn game. Why? I pay my money. But I only get the first few levels?

One might look at me losing Mario Kart to a three-year-old and think I'm being nice and letting him win. I am not. I would, because I'm not one of those people who likes to trounce children to show them the world isn't fair (they will find out soon enough) but I don't need to pretend.

As in games and real life:

The only game I was ever okay at was my beloved EVE, because I was perfectly happy shooting a rock with lasers for eight hours at a time.

The game my wife has been working on got released recently and I played that. Well, I tried. I said to her a few days in, You're going to have to look and see what I'm doing wrong because I'm just being massacred every time. She did, and it turns out I never upgraded my gear. I offered to be loaned out as the world's most inept beta tester so people can marvel at just how wrong their game can be played.