Assassin’s Creed was my gateway game

Video games have always been a part of my life — I was born in 1995, so games were well established as a childhood pastime by the time I was old enough to play them. But as a young teen, I pushed gaming to the side as a hobby, especially single-player games. Playing AAA console games in your free time wasn’t considered girly, which was hugely important in my middle school in 2007. Worse, boys were better at gaming than girls — or at least that’s what they told me.

Nonetheless, my father had been teaching me to play first-person shooters and RPGs since I was a toddler, and I knew my way around a breadth of games from my childhood Sega and Nintendo consoles. It never occurred to me that I could be good at games, though, nor that I could claim the hobby as my own. But in 2008, I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas, outfitted with a handful of AAA games that the GameStop employee surely told my parents to buy. And then it was all over — especially once I booted up Assassin’s Creed 2.

When I played this game with my dad, I was often the one showing him how to use a mechanic or navigate the map, not the other way around. Eventually, I started playing on my own time. My relationship with gaming became much like it is now — I’d get home from school, fire up Assassin’s Creed 2 on the Xbox, and play until the sun went down, like a lot of other kids in my community, regardless of gender. I was enraptured with the game’s mantling and parkour, not to mention the piles of side quests to discover and complete. Stealth assassinations were my favorite part of the game — and still are what I like best about the franchise.

The boys I knew were obsessed with the Call of Duty and Fallout games, but Assassin’s Creed 2 wasn’t a title they dominated — and it wasn’t a game I couldn’t get a word in about unless I wanted to be mansplained to, or otherwise fetishized for enjoying games. I knew I was good at the game without anyone telling me so, which meant I could get good at other games, too.

Those other games ended up being the typical repertoire of an Xbox 360 owner: Bioshock (all of them), Saints Row, Grand Theft Auto IV, Forza Motorsport 3. Later, a friend (also a girl) introduced me to Dead Space and we’d trade off run after run, working together to progress each time we hung out. It’d still be a few years before I discovered indie games — and a few more yet before I started once again embracing the “girl games” I loved as a kid, like The Sims and Cooking Mama.

Really, I never had to become competent at AAA third-person games in order to call myself a gamer and engage in conversations about games. But mid-2000s gaming fandom was a really tough place to be anyone but a cis boy. Playing Assassin’s Creed 2 made me feel like I could be a part of conversations I was otherwise excluded from. Or better, it let me start my own conversations about games with whoever I wanted. It was powerful that I played the game by myself, in my free time, for no one’s enjoyment but my own.

With a franchise like Assassin’s Creed under my belt, gaming became a hobby just for me — and on my terms, which meant I never talked about video games in exclusionary ways, like the boys my age did. And look at me now — playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows for my full-time job, where I write about games. If you’re also someone who grew up feeling like the video game community was sometimes exclusionary, what was your gateway game? Tell me your stories.