No idea when I started it, but I have a little anecdote about a friend. Quiet, calm girl, a bit shy, always nice to everyone, tried to avoid conflict whenever possible. She loved to watch her boyfriend play videogames but had zero interest in trying it out herself - she always just wanted to watch and said it felt like an interactive movie to her.

Me and her boyfriend were taking turns playing FF12 and you can kinda pre-program the behaviour of the characters with “gambits” - if done right, you can just waltz up to an enemy and watch your party go ham on it without the need to manually attack. Total no-brainer. He eventually gave her the controller and said it was her turn now, and that she doens’t need to worry about memorizing button inputs and the like, just walk around and have fun, it’s totally easy …

It took all of five minutes until she was cussing like a drunken sailor, totally immersed in the game, cheering on her party, insulting the monsters. One sentence in particular almost made me choke: “Ich schlag dir den Arsch voll bis du Schätze scheisst!” (we’re all German BTW) which roughly translates to something like “I’ll whoop your booty until you poop loot!” (assonance included).

They’re married now. ;)