I still remember the
first time I saw a video game. It was the mid-seventies and my company
was testing something new called an "intelligent terminal."
We'd enter information from our orders at the intelligent terminal
and save the information on a floppy disk that looked like an
old 45 RPM record. At the end of the work day we'd walk the eight
inch, 128K floppy up to the special air-conditioned space where
the company kept its big IBM mainframe.
There the IT staff (whom we called MIS staff) would take over.
They would drop the floppy into a special piece of IBM equipment.
Then, "Presto!" the order information would shoot from the floppy
disk to the mainframe without the need for any nasty keypunch
work.
It was big stuff. The MIS staff was down in my office several
times a day. They'd make adjustments, test the terminal, ask questions,
and show us new things.
One day one of the techs, a guy we called "the Wiz" showed me
this neat game that I could play on the tiny screen of the terminal.
It was called "pong." A dot representing a ball moved ever so
slowly across the screen.
The two players each used keys to move paddles, represented by
lines, up and down the screen to stop the "ball" from reaching
their goal and to propel it toward the opponent's goal. We all
thought it was great fun and very cutting edge.
Ten years later video games had become a lot more sophisticated
and very popular. There were "arcade games" and there were the
ones you could play at home on special consoles.
You could also play video games on your personal computer. Of
course, personal computers weren't much then, so the games weren't
either. But that was changing quickly.
A few years later, when my son got a job as a video game tester,
he was the envy of all his friends. They all played video games
and thought that a job doing that was just about the best that
could be hoped for in the world of work.
Back then young men were about the only people who played video
games. We expected them to stop when they hit their twenties.
They didn't. The age of the oldest video gamers has climbed steadily.
It's up to around 40 and still climbing. Sony says that 12 percent
of the buyers of its Playstation 2 are 36 or older and 22 percent
are between 26 and 35.
And boys aren't the only ones playing those games anymore. RealOne
Arcade, an online game operation, says that women account for
60 percent of their subscribers.
Today's games use state-of-the-art technology. Bigger and more
powerful chips and computers mean that the games can be bigger
and faster and more realistic. And, a whole generation of game
development has made the games more sophisticated.
Great video games are like all other great games. There's a clear
objective, what you have to do to win the game. And there's regular
feedback so you know how you're doing. In a game that would be
the score.
Combine great technology and great game design and you have a
great game. But you can have something else, too. You can have
a great communications device.
The US Army introduced a video game called "America's Army" a
couple of years ago. It shows realistic combat situations. It's
turning out to have some unanticipated benefits. People who play
the game are far more likely to enlist than other people are.
NASA's got the message, too. That agency is planning to use a
space station simulation game as a way to tell the public about
how the station works and what it does. Colonial Williamsburg
has partnered up with MIT to develop an online game that will
tell the story of what life was like in Revolutionary times.
You can use video game tools as a way to communicate but you
can also take that one step further. You can use them to teach
both children and adults.
Games such as the AccuTouch Endovascular Simulation System are
used to teach medical students how to do actual procedures, allowing
them to learn from mistakes that don't hurt anything more than
their egos. "Restaurant Empire" is a simulation game that puts
a player in charge of a restaurant. Business schools use it.
Today's video games are a lot more sophisticated than the simple
pong I saw thirty years ago. Just like the folks who used to play
them as kids, video games have grown up and taken their place
in the adult world.
Top of page
Here are some
key associations in the video game world.
The Electronic Entertainment
Expo is the annual video game trade show.
The Digital Games Research Association
(DiGRA) is a non-profit, international association of academics
and practitioners whose work focuses on digital games and associated
activities. http://www.digra.org/
The Education Arcade
represents a consortium of international game designers, publishers,
scholars, educators, and policy makers who are exploring the new
frontiers of educational media that have been opened by computer
and video games.
America's Army, the
Official U.S. Army Game (AA), provides young Americans with a
virtual web-based environment in which they can explore Army career
opportunities within an entertaining setting that is tailored
to their interests and aptitudes.
Restaurant Empire
is the game that lets you "Starting with nothing except some cash
and a passion for food, build a restaurant from the bottom up
- hire waiters, decorate, even cook the meals! Buy, build, outsell
and under-price your competition." Along the way you should learn
some valuable lessons about managing a restaurant.
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