Notorious M.O.M.- How GTAV Helps One Mom Cope

Description: From the game Grand Theft Auto V, a behind
the shoulder perspective of a man firing a machine gun at a gas
station, with multiple fireballs, explosions and plumes of smoke.

Last week, I linked to an article in the Guardian written by Keza McDonald that gave advice for new moms wanting to balance gaming with the responsibilities of being a new parent. This week in the Guardian Sarah Lee Donlan talks about how playing Grand Theft Auto V helps her cope by offering a little escapism:

My daughter’s constant night feeds are keeping me awake, but not awake enough to do anything useful. So I pass the time in my preferred way. I steal aircraft. I take a sleek black jet, fly it over a sleeping city and land it smoothly on a desert strip, narrowly avoiding a wild dog... 

Suddenly faced with a new and overwhelming responsibility that came with a seemingly endless list of dos and don’ts, GTA V allowed me to break the rules, mess about and act in a wildly dangerous manner. 

During the day I was an exhausted new mother making small talk at Brighton baby groups, but at night I escaped to San Andreas, where I lived a life of violent crime and irresponsibility.

One complaint about open world sandbox style games in general, and the GTA series in particular, is that lots of times it's just a lot more fun to mess around causing mayhem or exploring the game world instead of doing the quests that advance the main story. For Donlan, this is part of the game's appeal. After she recounts the effort she undertook to create a gigantic explosion by taking down a jumbo jet:

The amazing thing is, all of this adventure exists outside the plot. To me, GTA V is at its absolute best once the campaign is done. San Andreas is filled with detail, most of which is barely touched upon in the main story.
It has luscious scenery and diverse wildlife. I have been eaten by a shark, swum with orcas and even found a humpback whale singing gently off toward the upper limits of the ocean. I also have my favourite places to find peace: a sea cave on the bottom right of the map and the quiet mountain stream just north of the city. GTA doesn’t just give you permission to be irresponsible, it gives you permission to rest.

How about you, readers? Does this sound like the appeal for open world games for you, or is it something else? Comment below!

Co-Op Play: How New Moms Can Balance Gaming & Life

A decade ago, I wrote about how the first generation to grow up with video games was now grown up and starting to raise their own families. And while video games have become even more advanced,  more widespread, and more mainstream, the tension between day to day life and pursuing a hobby is still here. While women make up the largest majority of video game players, there are precious few guides or resources for new moms looking to balance gaming, and the double standard between men and women remains, as Keza McDonald writes for the Guardian:

[W]e don’t expect dads to give up all their hobbies and redirect their energies into sewing bunting or father-baby yoga. Mums shouldn’t have to either... During the first three months of my son’s life, playing video games was one of the only things I could realistically do for myself. They are relatively cheap and you don’t have to spend two hours trying to leave the house.
It’s hard to find the time, though, and this is about the only area of parenting where a cursory Google didn’t throw up 50 articles giving me totally conflicting advice on what I should be doing. So I thought I’d fill that gap.

One suggestion McDonald gives is to make sure the games you pick can be started and put down easily:

Say goodbye to online multiplayer games. Just accept that you are not going to be doing any four-hour Destiny raids at any point in the next year. Anything that requires you to turn up at a certain place, at a certain time, is out (FYI: this also applies to real life appointments). 

Any game you play now will need a pause button, and must not overly tax your tired brain. I found games with gentle, predictable rhythms extremely comforting, so I spent a lot of time with the fantasy farming game Stardew Valley in the middle of the night. I also rediscovered the space ship sim Faster Than Light on my iPad, and enjoyed zoning out with Amplitude, a trippy music game that I’d already spent about 100 hours mastering and could therefore play on autopilot.

Readers, do you have any tips to share on being a new mom and a gamer?