I have two boys, currently 12 and 8, and we do all sorts of geek boy stuff. We read comics, we build Lego space ships, and we play what most child psychologists would call an unhealthy amount of video games. They even have their own Xbox’s and we play a ton of online games together.

I also have a daughter, aged 10, who I have recently discovered is, in secret a bit of a gamer.

Like the majority of fathers I freely admit to being at something of a loss on how to raise a girl. Boys are easy for the simple reason I’m a boy, so for the most part I just raise my boys the way my dad raised me. They’re not carbon copies of me, developing their own interests outside my influences but we do plenty of stuff together.

My daughter though, well she’s a girl. She likes musicals and goes to dance classes (for future parents, nothing will ever be as expensive as dance classes, beware!), she watches Glee and mind numbing amounts of Disney shows about popular, wealthy people and all the obstacles they inexplicably face being popular and wealthy. She likes girly things, Dance Central and Singstar were the only games I was aware she played with any regularity, and a long passed bout of Little Big Planet, although the games jerky controls had her rage quitting before long.

So I was quite gobsmacked to come home from work one day to find her couch bound, my Xbox controller in hand changing her characters outfit in Fable 3. Not a game I’d pick as a good entry point for someone new to games. Turns out as the weather had gotten too hot to go to the park after school (we live in an ungodly hot part of Australia) she’d been playing it for about a week and was all ready up to Aurora, a foreign land you visit about two thirds into the game.

After quietly watching her play for half an hour I was impressed. She knew how to play, she’d intuitively picked up the advantage of game activities like grinding for experience and levelling up specific weapons. She’d also committed, in Fable’s black and white moral structure, to play as a ‘good’ character and had noted this seemed like the harder choice. I asked if she’d learned the trick to making money by buying up property and businesses. She had not and this opened up a whole new game within the game to her managing the economy of Albion.

After a while she asked to see my character and we booted up my game. She wasn’t very impressed with me having four wives around the place, but was pleased that despite me finishing the game there were still things to do. She jumped into my game with her character and we toured around, I showed her some of the secrets and hidden puzzles around the game like Demon Doors and Sunset House. It was a rare father daughter bonding experience.

As we sat down for dinner I asked why she’d never gotten married in the game. She said she’d not seen the point of getting married and having babies, she was trying to start a revolution and become Queen, marriage didn’t seem as important by comparison.

Maybe I’m doing a better job raising my daughter than I thought.