Game gifting

Only a week ago I celebrated my quarter-century birthday. Let me tell you – the past twenty-five years (about a fourth of which I can’t even remember) have felt like a long time. It’s hard to imagine experiencing the passing of another twenty-five years (and, hopefully, more than that). Being at a ripe old age of 70 or 80 just seems so unfathomably far in the future.

Anyway, it is far from my intention to wax on about life past and life ahead. Between my more recent birthdays and Christmases, I’ve come to notice a peculiar thing. Everyone in my family knows of my love of games. I’m always the one that brings said games to the family parties – the boardgames, the DDR, the Guitar Hero, the Wii (until, of course, everyone purchased one for themselves). When they can’t find me, my family always knows to look for me in front of a TV or at my computer. When the can find me, they are likely to find my trusty DS in hand. Everyone in my family probably knows by now that I snagged a dream job working in the game industry. So my question is: why is it that even despite my obvious appreciation for anything and everything game-related, I hardly ever receive game-related gifts from family members? Surely I’m not the only person who’s noticed this kind of behavior. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate the other gifts I’ve received. My parents have given me a variety of cool and useful things in recent years. But it’s interesting to think about the various reasons behind why they might have chosen to give me something else other than a game. After all, when I knew my sister collected Beanie Babies, a new Beanie Baby was the first gift idea that would come to my mind.

Here are a few theories I came up with that might explain such behavior. Keep in mind that I’m only considering gifting situations in which a game is an appropriate gift – meaning wedding gifts don’t really count (though that’s totally debatable…). I’m also generally examining the phenomenon as it relates to adult recipients, and I am making the assumption that the gift-giver has already demonstrated a willingness to spend at least the cost of a game, opting to spend an equal or greater quantity of money on something else.

• Lack of knowledge: this is probably the most common situation. Most of my family members know little to nothing about the games I would like to play. They don’t follow the release schedules or the critically acclaimed titles. They don’t have the gaming blogs on their RSS aggregator. Most of them don’t even know what RSS is. I recall one incident years ago (maybe even decades ago) in which an uncle bought me a completely generic PC RTS I’d never heard of. I can’t remember the name. I tried to play it, but it was just unplayable. I certainly don’t blame them if they’re trying to avoid situations like those. But in the past, my family hardly ever shied away from asking me and other gift recipients what we wanted. I can still remember compiling comprehensive, detailed wish lists along with the rest of my cousins. It’s not such a huge leap for someone to do the same for me now regarding the good game titles. Furthermore, no knowledge is needed to purchase a gaming or electronics store gift card. So why do they opt to get me clothing store gift cards instead? Maybe…
• Games are “childish”: the overwhelming majority of game coverage in the mainstream media treats games as an adolescent diversion targeted toward hyperactive kids and hormonal teens. That idea that only kids should be playing games seems like a culturally pervasive one – albeit one that will fall into decline as the gaming generations grow up. Thinking about it, I did get far more game-related gifts as a child, although such gifts stopped as I went on to college, so this is certainly a possible reason. After all, my younger gamer cousins are getting games all the time. So why am I getting left out of the action? Perhaps it could be…
• I already buy what I want: the big difference between me and my younger cousins is that I’m a working adult, meaning that I theoretically have the income to purchase any game I like whenever I like, leaving little to be given as a gift. (This isn’t quite as true now that I’m married to a penny-pincher.) In my mind, the trick to buying a good (and affordable) gift for a working adult is to buy them something they don’t really realize they want until they get it. For instance, my dad (like me) loves a clean house. So my wife and I got him a Roomba for Christmas – something he doesn’t know much about but could certainly use. He’s since thanked us for it, as he uses it a lot now. However, using this gifting philosophy for a gamer is a hard thing to do. This ties back to my first bullet point: most of my family does not spend the time that I do looking for the quality games to purchase. In fact, to get me something I’d like without me already knowing about it would involve learning both my peculiar taste in games, my current game library, and finding an obscure but critically praised game to give. In essence, they’d almost have to read more about games than I already do (or know someone who does). Anyway, my marriage makes this entire point obsolete, as I can’t just buy whatever I want now. I have this “budget” thing to adhere to. So maybe my family buys me other things because…
• I need other things: perhaps my obsession with games has blinded me to the fact that my family sees me wearing the same pants every time I come over. Actually, that’s not true. My closet is brimming with clothes I’ve acquired over several years (since I’ve stopped growing taller and all). My wife can attest to this. I probably have at least twice as many clothes as she does. But there were certainly gifting instances in which this particular motivation could have definitely applied, like my parents’ recent Christmas gift of a GPS system, which has been immensely helpful during car trips. They also probably know how easily I get lost on the streets. Also, my aunt recently gave me and my wife a pressure cooker – an especially useful appliance for cooking those traditional Filipino stews. Besides… I do like cooking, which leads me to my final point:
• I want other things: while I do love games, there are better things that my family can get for me. My mom bought me a brand new acoustic guitar a few years back, shortly after I got out of college. I’ve come to appreciate it far more than I would have appreciated its value’s worth of games. Sometimes, someone will just want to give you an expensive gift, and as far as luxuries go, games aren’t that expensive. Like with all things, there’s a point of diminishing returns at which the utility received from one larger, more expensive thing vastly outweighs the utility received from many smaller, similar things. For instance, my wife booked us for an overnight trip last weekend in the Napa Valley, where we ate some fantastic meals and slept at a quaint little bed and breakfast – it was an experience with which I wouldn’t have easily parted for the sake of a few more games to add to my already-overflowing backlog.

So what about any of you? Have your blatantly obvious gaming desires been overlooked by family or friends? What reasons do you think they had to do so? Or are you one of those people that didn’t give your gaming family member / acquaintance that gift of game? If so, why not?

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