'My momma shoots better than you!"
In the video game Quake III, it was a taunt designed to shame feeble players. But lately the same phrase has become a bragging point for kids whose moms are dab hands at Xbox and Wii games.
In living rooms across Canada, a growing number of mothers are joining their sons and daughters at the family gaming system. They range from serious gamers to women whose habits are strictly Wii-kend, but these ladies have one thing in common: In their households, video games are hardly the Resident Evil.
Rachel Lorenzi of Montreal says she spends as much time on the Xbox as her husband does, and far more than her five-year-old son, Tristan. When he's in bed, Ms. Lorenzi, 32, gets so absorbed in shooter games such as Call of Duty that she plays for up to four hours at a stretch.
During the day, she is back at the Xbox playing Lego Star Wars with her son. Wielding virtual light sabres together is a good bonding activity, the stay-at-home mother says, and a great way to keep an eye on her son's gaming habits as he gets older. "It's really fun for me to see how he can problem-solve his way through the different levels," she says.
Mothers such as Ms. Lorenzi have come a long way since the days when loathing video games was de rigueur. Women make up 40 per cent of gamers, according to a 2008 study by the market-research company NPD Group. And the girls who perfected their aim on Ataris have grown up to be gamer moms.
Hard-core gaming mothers post about the eagerly awaited World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King release on websites such as Gamermomsclub.ning.com and other online forums for mothers who can outfrag their teenage sons in Halo.
But the majority of moms who play video games say they took up gaming to connect with their husbands and kids.
Danielle Donders, 39, says her husband campaigned for at least a year before they bought a Wii system for their family of three boys, aged 7, 5 and 1.
The Wii is now a favourite Donders pastime, an occasional babysitter and, in the case of the fitness-oriented games, a handy way for the kids to burn off energy in the frigid Ottawa winter, she says.
Gaming still is not her first choice of activity, Ms. Donders adds, but she admits to being a Rock Band junkie. "I certainly wouldn't have imagined before the Wii that I would enjoy video games with the family as much as I do," she says.
Stereotypes of the "policing mother" who monitors the family's gaming habits are rife in pop culture, according to researchers Jessica Enevold and Charlotte Hagstrom, who are partway through a three-year, Sweden-based study of gaming mothers.
But a new image of the mother with a gaming console in her grip is emerging, say the researchers, who document the shift in their paper My Momma Shoots Better than You! "It's very much coupled with the marketing and development in game design that you see with Nintendo and Sony," Ms. Enevold says.
A few years ago, the Swedish researchers point out, video-game companies realized that if they could get the mom, they could get the whole family. Out came a slew of educational games and lighthearted fare that had more in common with Twister than the ultraviolent Manhunt or Grand Theft Auto.
Nintendo's user-friendly Wii, launched in 2006, quickly became the top-selling video-game console; it's a hit with moms who play Wii Monopoly with their kids and swear by Wii Fit to shed extra pounds.
And last month, a Video Gaming Boot Camp for Moms was held at AOL's Manhattan headquarters as a promotion for PlaySavvy.com, a website that gives tips on helping kids develop healthy gaming habits.
With marketing strategies like these, it's no wonder console-gaming is displacing TV-watching as the core living-room activity, according to the Swedish researchers.
Laurie Mapp, 33, says her kids are thrilled when she joins them in a game of Mario Kart. "I don't have a problem with [gaming]as long as it's not an overly violent game," says the mother of three sons, aged 7, 4 and 1.
Ms. Mapp says she started playing video games when her husband bought a Wii system for their family, who live in the Edmonton suburb of Spruce Grove. Before long, she discovered her own passion for adventure games such as The Legend of Zelda. "I'm the only one in the house who plays it," she says.
Swinging her sword in Zelda has helped her empathize when her husband gets sucked into video games, Ms. Mapp says, and she now educates her kids about their addictive nature.
When her sons become teenagers, they will have a mother who fights with them over the gaming system and knows what video games are about, she adds.
And even if they don't like sharing the joystick, they will get to boast that their mom's got game.