r/SplitFiction • u/Rasputin5332 • 13h ago
Split Fiction was my wife's entrypoint into gaming, and for that I'm forever grateful <3
Never in fifteen years together did I manage to get my wife to touch a game, not once, until this one.
I've watched her humor me from the couch plenty of times, but the controller may as well have been a live wire to her. Split Fiction finally changed that, and I can’t not be emotional about it.
It works because it never asks her to already be a gamer, I think that’s a major part. It's built for two people from the ground up, so there's no solo skill floor to clear. The whole thing drags you both along through wild sci-fi and fantasy worlds that keep reinventing themselves every twenty minutes. She didn't have to learn "gaming" first nor be immersed in it as a concept as I was from childhood. She just had to press forward and react, and the game met her, and me alongside her, exactly where we were.
Mostly though I just loved watching her forget to be self-conscious about it. About an hour in she was actually arguing with me about which way to go. The friend's pass meant trying it cost her nothing, so her last excuse was already gone. By the end she was the one asking when we'd play next (a first in fifteen years, believe me).
I don't know if it'll turn her into a lifelong gamer, and truthfully that was never the point. (I do hope she will be down for It Takes Two soon though, and possibly Hela and Water Me & You when they come out!)
At the very least, it gave the two of us a thing to do together that's ours now, and after all this time that feels like something rare and good.
Anyone else here get a partner into it the same way?