Yahoo Lifestyle 
How to get your girlfriend playing video games
He's not just Fitzy and Wippa's newsreader or a panelist for The Morning Show, FOX Sports, and the ABC – Matt de Groot is also Be's newest columnist. He'll be taking us on a deep dive into the world of dating and relationships... from a guy's perspective.
I got my non-Xbox-playing girlfriend to spend a night actually enjoying playing games with me, and gents: here’s how.
There are few things in a relationship that create a gulf between men and women more than video-gaming.
If you believe the stats, gaming is actually very popular among women, but my anecdotal evidence is vastly different.
I’ve seen many a fight between couples over how many hours a guy will spend gaming; I’ve known couples to cite gaming as a major reason in their break up, and sheesh, I’ve almost ended a relationship over it as well.
Girlfriends just don’t seem to like their boyfriends playing video games.
Not all, but many.
So, as I’ve just committed to a life with a non-gaming partner, I figured I could either fight her on it and forever sneak in a few hours of playing when she’s out of the house, or get her to join me and see if I could make her an Xbox One fan as well.
Challenge set.
I put to her the idea of a gaming date night: I would pick the games, all she needed to do was show up with a truly open mind and do her best to try not to have fun.
She agreed, with the caveat that she was once a demon at Maria Kart. This is a common claim among girls, which is both unverifiable and almost certainly inaccurate, but I appreciated the banter.
First step was to win her heart-and-mind, and the best way to do that was with snacks. I provided all the snacks in the land: lollies, popcorn, chocolate, chips. If the games didn’t win her over, the snacks certainly would.
Next was to find a game that we could both enjoy.
A rookie error is to try to bring them straight into a hard-core shooter like Halo, and hope you can convince them on lighting and particle effects, cinematics and tight controls.
So, I went with Just Dance 2, the dancing equivalent of karaoke. I figured if I was asking her to extend herself, I needed to put myself out there and do the same and make myself look a ridiculous…
Morale was low at the beginning, but a quick and full-bodied rendition of the ‘Time Warp’ later and you could see she was starting to come around. Some Drake, Jamiroquai, and Outkast later, genuine fun was actually being had.
I thought the time was right to get serious and put a controller in hand and play some more traditional games.
The risks were high as this is now the gaming she has grown to see and dismiss…
I picked a game called ‘Lovers in A Dangerous Space time’ because, well, it had the word lovers in the title, and that seemed to be as good a place to start as any.
Things were going really well; we were working together, flying around and fending off angry love bunnies (obviously), and she seemed to genuinely be enjoying doing it together.
I was also enjoying the novelty of playing the Xbox One, guilt-free, while she was in the house.
Unfortunately, things hit a snag when news of the Royal Engagement broke.
I had lost her attention and now she was taking a deeper-than-deep dive on the couple and any news that could be found on it.
All seemed lost.
Considering how far I we had come, I would have been happy to call it a successful night, but wanted to try one last game; a brutal and graphic shooting game on the Xbox One that she’d regularly bemoaned as being, well, brutal and graphic – Call of Duty.
Of course, she was off it. I had gone a bridge too far.
But she played it, and that is the win, fellas. Rather than the usual 100% disinterest, she had come so far in one night - my non-gamer fiancée was now sitting on the couch with me playing Call of Duty.
It didn’t last long, and she wasn’t very good, but who cares?
So, fellas, the trick is this: put yourself out there a wee bit, and the gesture will be returned. Play games you can both enjoy - it’s a gateway drug to playing CoD together.
Oh, and provide snacks.
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