Experts often advise parents not to try and be friends with their children. The idea is that doing so may hinder their ability to effectively administer discipline. While this is probably good advice for the vast majority of parents, I have the pleasure of having a father who is also a great friend. We can talk for hours on any topic and share a similar sense of humor. He respects me for who I am, and I couldn't ask for a more supportive person in my life. This may sound a little ridiculous, but it is thanks to video games that we were able to bridge the father-son divide and become who we are today.

For most of my early childhood my dad was the disciplinarian of the family. While my mother was the loving, hugging type, my father was there to dole out the spankings when my brother or I got into trouble.

He was gone a lot of the time, and it wasn't until later that I learned this was because he would work terribly long hours to make ends meet. You tend not to think about these things as a child, and as such, a lack of information tainted the image of my father.

He was never abusive or excessively absent in my upbringing; he just never seemed to be present when good things were happening and always had the misfortune of being around when I was making trouble. We have many pictures that prove we had good times together, but those memories really only surface when I work at bringing them up. Despite all of this, my father was responsible for one of the greatest Christmas gifts of all time: my Nintendo Entertainment System.

Back in 1990, my older brother and I were crazy about Nintendo, but we always figured that we were too poor to ever get one. Generally, a friend from school had the system, and he would invite us to play it. So when we unwrapped the final present under the tree on that fateful December morning, you can imagine just how jubilant we were. Our faces exploded with laughter and screaming and excitement. A Nintendo all our own! It was incredible. Mom and Dad looked on with pride and took picture after picture of our resulting celebration as we ran around the living room acting like fools.

When they realized that we would, if allowed, spend every waking minute on our new toy, we were given strict rules about when we could play and how much time we could spend with it. This disciplined approach to our consumption was instrumental to our finishing our schoolwork and getting good grades. My parents would sometimes remark that getting us hooked so early was a mistake.

We would eventually move on to a Super Nintendo, a PlayStation, and a Nintendo 64. All of these were looked upon as unnecessary distractions in our lives, and I was never able to get my dad to play more than a few minutes with us.

But this changed on May 12, 1998.

The prerelease hype for Gran Turismo had me excited (for a racing game, which was a genre I had never really connected with). It promised the most realistic physics and handling to date. I had told my dad about it every few weeks during the lead up to its release. I somehow managed to convince him to buy it for us during a trip to Target, and I was amazed that he even agreed to play with me.

That night we spent three hours with the game, and I was surprised at how much it fascinated my dad. We began to race together in Arcade Mode and worked hard at unlocking the licenses and cars. My dad wasn't the best driver and never really figured out how to take turns without braking to a complete stop. This led to what he called “mowing the lawn” -- cutting through the grass-covered corners. We had a ton of fun, and throughout the many nights we played together, something happened. We started talking to each other.

We started having actual conversations about what it was like when he was growing up. We talked about how he met my mom, what their first years of marriage were like, how hard it was for him in college, and the long hours he had to work when I was just a child. My father started to become an actual person to me, and I was eating it up.

Eventually, we began having talks on the back porch in the summer, during long road trips, and while we built things for his office. At the same time, we continued to play games together, but they were no longer the catalyst for interacting with each other. They were merely something we liked to do together.

When Gran Turismo 2 arrived, the two of us worked at unlocking as much of the content as we could and kept a journal of our progress. We battled for weeks on end in Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo. We got Pokémon Puzzle League when the family cat died, and it helped us cope with it and talk about it. Super Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball 2 even got us yelled at by my mother because we were being too loud late at night, howling with laughter and screaming at missed jumps. The times I spent with my dad were great, and after that initial experience with Gran Turismo, I never felt like we had to work hard at getting along. We developed a natural, easy relationship.

It's quite possible that we could have still wound up being the friends that we are today without the help of video games. I don't know if it's my hobby that made our bond so strong, or if the time we spent playing games could have been substituted with some other random activity. What I do know for certain is that, following that very first night when we sat on the couch and loaded up Gran Turismo, a communicative comfort settled into our relationship.

He no longer saw my favorite hobby as a waste of time. This type of entertainment was a positive experience, and he was finally discovering it. We bonded in the same way that some fathers do with their sons while camping or fishing. Instead of fixing up old cars, we raced digital ones. Instead of arguing over some difference of opinion, we battled it out in a puzzle game.

I came to understand and respect my father in a completely new way after we started playing together. When he put in the time to interact with my interests, I started to see him as one of my friends. And that's really not such a bad thing when you consider it -- parenting experts be damned.

I'm sure that there are other fathers out there who are dying to play games with their children -- to share their passion and pass it on -- and I hope to hear about how sitting in front a screen and holding a couple controllers has played a part in others' relationships with their parents. Gaming is certainly one of the best things that ever happened to mine.