Thank you, No Man’s Sky, for my relationship with my nephew.
My sister, my nieces, and my nephew live out of state; I’m a remote worker, and I spend a few months out of the year near them out of my parent’s house nearby.
Anyway, they will engage with me when prompted by my mom or my dad, but not much more than that; I understand it, but it’s still not been my ideal.
But, about a month ago, mom and dad came home after picking him up from preschool (he is six), and I had my SteamLink wired up to the big screen in the living room. He was awestruck, asking me dozens of questions in the space of three minutes; he pulled up a stool much too tall for him, hugging his knees and watching. The next day, he asked to play himself, and I made a new Creative save that we spent dozens of hours on over the next few weeks. We saw floating worms like giant asparagus, and he still talks about the time one dove deep into the ground a few feet from him.
He’s distracted by so many other things, and he only asks me to “play our game“ occasionally now; that said, we talk about all kinds of things (I’m teaching him “my very educated mother just served us nine pizzas“ to remember the planets in our solar system), and he runs up to me now in a way he never did before.
And I don’t know if any of it would have happened if we hadn’t bonded over this silly, beautiful game.
submitted by /u/RainyDayMatt
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