Video games: we buy them, we play them, we love them, but what is the social background to them that makes them such a staple to the modern world?In America, we turn a profit based on the manipulation of emotion. The gamer market has also adapted to this strategy to the tenth-power. Developers conduct research to understand just how the mind of a gamer works, all to appease their audience. If they do well eno
ugh, well it means big bucks.
In recent years, technology has evolved to accommodate the requests of the players. The face of the market is changing. Gaming company Nintendo has b
een on the winning side of this age of growth. The company sought a resurgence, and with home counsel giants like Microsoft's 'Xbox' and Sony's 'Playstation' platforms, Ninten
do wanted to focus on the crowds that others tended to ignore.
Enter the Nintendo 'Wii'. The Wii was a platform all its own. The concept,
make gaming more interactive. Nintendo revamped gaming from the gr
ound up in several ways. The first was it's controller. The traditional two-handed control
ler was converted to a wrist-strapped remote, with hand-held capabilities. Nintendo listened to all the talk of how video games made people lazy, thus, Wii Fit,
an interactive aerobic wor
kout game equipped with a 'wii-fit board,' was created.
While Nintendo celebrated it's success catering toward to young children and adults 30+, Microsoft and Sony still waged war with traditional epic gaming, which brings me to my next point. Video games have been successful over the years due to the focus of story plots, character development, and visual/audio graphics. The further this combination was pushed the more profit was turned. Games have gone so far ahead in their attempts to tell a good story that now, many of them resemble feature films that break the box office, hell, a few games have made the leap themselves! Consider video games as another way to tell a story. Historically, we as human beings have been passing down stories orally for thousands
of years. Well, give them picture, and make them interactive and wa-lah, video games.
Modern games have taken reference from historical events. The mega-hit 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2', which according to the L.A. Times as of last month has
sold over $1 billion in total sales, focuses on American Marines in conflict with Russia. Coinci
dence? Well if you do your research boys and girls you'd note that the U.S. and Russia aren't necessarily the best of chums right now. The story involves Russia trying to invade the small country of Georgia, and them buying a war-ship
valued at over $750 million from France...it's kind of complicated, but the point is, historical reference is taken and implemented into video game story lines t
o provide a surreal experience for gamers, and then taking it even further by allowing on-line play, connecting millions of players across the globe! Why enlist when you can log-on, right?
From catering to the sports crazies with franchises like 'Madden' and 'NBA2K', to traditional titles like 'Mario', or mega-blockbuster games like the newly release adaptation of 'Dante's Inferno', today's gaming market proves there's something for everybody. The life style you want or the adventure your mind seeks to escape everyday life is only a disk away.
I agree....mostly. I would say that the Wii is dying out - Sony and Microsoft beat Nintendo, albeit for the first time, in console sales in Q4 of 2009 and Nintendo has continued to fall behind in sales in initial estimates and figures for Q1 2010. Sony and Microsoft, unlike Nintendo, are catering to a more mature audience and are expanding to cater to the younger and older market Nintendo has been catering to with the Wii. Although Microsoft's Natale and Sony's untitled motion controls take ideas from Nintendo, and may be very similar in design to the Wii remote, the motion controls will only cement Sony and Microsoft as the big giants and, most likely, leave Nintendo in the wake - that is unless Nintendo begins to cater to a more mature audience which is something they are not necessarily comfortable with according to their game catalog over the past 20 years and 5 systems. But yeah, I definitely consider games much more entertaining than movies or television as games are what I like to call "interactive film." Why go watch something when you can interact with it, make your own movie? Ok, not all games allow that much freedom....yet. You're right, games are getting more and more complex and pertinent. They are building a reputation of legitimacy.
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