It sounds great in theory, but having a significant other who is also a gamer isn’t always as great as you’d think.

Sure, it’s helpful that my wife understands my job, my hobby, and my obsession. When work (or pleasure) calls for me to lose seven straight hours in a virtual world, she only complains that she misses me, not that she doesn’t understand my "toys." Even when there’s a single-player game we’re both interested in, we split our time handling the controls, but there’s always the argument: Who’s going to get the Xbox 360 Achievements or PlayStation 3 Trophies?

It’s usually decided with a coin toss, which seems fair enough to the both of us. (OK, I usually let my wife log in because I love her … and she wears the pants around the house.) But when it comes to cooperative games, we usually don’t have to make that choice: We both accumulated achievements and other rewards while playing through games like Halo 3, LEGO Batman: The Videogame, and Rock Band.

But that’s only on the Xbox 360, where we can both sign into our Xbox LIVE account simultaneously. When it comes to the PlayStation 3, one of us is always getting screwed.