Hello again! My name is Makenzie, and the most important thing about me is that I am a Christian: a follower of Jesus Christ doing the best I can in this world. Additionally facts include that I am the wife of a very supportive husband, I am a mom of 2, (a toddler and one more on the way), and my hobbies include reading, drinking lots of coffee, and attempting to craft things while I enjoy a goofy show.
Now that’s out of the way, why am I running Joyful Gaming Co?
Originally, I lived in the Seattle area where my family was constantly playing games together. We weren’t particularly active people, but we spent a lot of time being together and playing games as a family. I am beyond grateful for that time with them because it’s one of the things that helped to form me as a person.
Have you ever struggled with not knowing what to talk about or how to connect with another person? I have, whether it’s strangers or even my own friends and family. One of the things that’s a pretty reliable fallback is: “Do you play any games?”
As a family of board gamers, I was able to answer yes to that question pretty frequently. We never really got into videogames though…maybe because I had no brothers? Plus, video gamers were (and still sometimes are) considered lazy, aggressive, or unsociable. Why would I play video games? There was a part of me that desired to investigate them, because I knew next to nothing about the various systems or games, but I never got around to it. I had more important things to do…like drinking coffee. THEN, I met my husband.
He wasn’t your stereotypical video game player:
1) He wasn’t lazy.
2) He was the kindness person I’d ever met.
3) He was a fairly social guy.
So I guess I had wrong idea about video gamers. As he and I grew closer, we played lots of boardgames together (I never fully left that behind me, and to my delight, he also enjoyed boardgames) and I explored what kind of video games I liked. Come to find out, there’s a lot more in this nerdy gaming world than I realized.
Fast-forward to today: we both play video games, we regularly make friends with others through board games, and we are excited for the day when we can start introducing our kiddos to this nerdy world we both love.
In order to that safely, I’ve put on my nerdy reader hat. How do I ensure that the boardgames and video games we play in our home encourage our kiddos to cultivate delight in truth, goodness, and beauty? I decided early on I wanted to teach my children how to recognize the differences between stories that bring life and stories that bring destruction.
The nerdy gaming world is not everyone’s cup of tea, but most everyone knows someone who loves something about games of the board and video variety. I hope Joyful Gaming Co will be a resource for you to 1) explore the nerdy world, and 2) learn about the powerful storytelling happening there. I’ll be reviewing both boardgames and video games and reporting back to you what I find so you are able to discern what would be good for your family and what wouldn’t be right for family.
Thanks for reading about me and coming along for the ride.