The Changing Face of Video Games

Video games have evolved greatly in the past 30 years. It first started with the simple game of Pong and other classic pixelized games in the 80's. Back then, video games was a new technology that amazed many people all around the world. People's views (mainly adults and parents) started to change their views and thoughts about video games in the 1990's and early 2000's. It was great entertainment at first for everyone but now the parents thought that it was taking over their kids with violence and other inappropriate content. Killing dragons with a level 3 sword replaced doing homework and sometimes socializing. Now there are new games and game consoles that are putting exercise into playing video games and eventually made a new genre, exergames. One of those new game consoles is the Nintendo Wii.

The Nintendo Wii allows people to be one with the player in the game by using a controller with a sensor in it. Now we can golf, cook, fish and play tennis in our very own televisions!! Because that's way more fun than doing it in real life. I think that this new genre of gaming is somewhat beneficial to us because even though it involves movement now, they are still games and it can still get in the way of what is important in life like education, work, family or friends. I don't believe that exergames are wolves in sheeps' clothing I just think that video games will never be completely healthy in a daily basis or they at least still have a long way to go. Here's just a little video to show you how silly it would be if the Wii Fit replaced going outdoors and doing real exercise.

In the Electronic Entertainment Expo (a.k.a. E3) of 2009, Peter Molyneux of Lionhead studios announced Project Natal, a new tool for the xbox 360. (which was later renamed as Kinect and will be coming out in 2011). Natal literally allows you to interact with games without using any controllers as demonstrated in these videos.


I have to say that I am very excited for this to come out but I definitely won't let it take over my life because after all, these are just games.