Screen Games

FTLComm - Tisdale - Saturday, December 29, 2001

This marks the twentieth year we have had a computer in our home and though what we do with it has changed what it can do remains remarkably the same. In the spring of 1981 the high school in Watson Lake got its first Apple ][+ and I was absolutely determined to learn all there was to know about the thing. One of the first nights the machine was in the school my wife came looking for her missing husband at 2:00 in the morning and found me hard at it, playing "pong" Pong was one of the first computer games and people had electronic game boxes hooked up to the televisions long before there were computers for the home. Since then things have only upgraded. The idea of a electronic routine that will interact with a player is part and parcel of computer technology. The interesting thing is that during the last ten years the computer games actually were substantially better than the ones played on your television set using some sort of game machine. Atari, SEGA, ADAM are all among the companies that have come and gone in the market and perhaps the best of them all was Commodore which though marketed as a game machine and a computer did both very well. In the market place today three companies are in the game hardware business, Nintendo, with its game cube, Sony with its Play Station 2 and the newest company to enter the market, Microsoft with its "Box". Essentially these three have left computer game playing almost in the dust. To really take advantage of the games available serious computer game players have to add a substantial amount of hardware to their computer to get the kind of performance needed to play and see the game. For this reason these, under $500 game machines cost far less than the add-ons to your family computer. The Nintendo Cube is not quite as flexible as the two other competitors but has a solid following because of the games available. Sony's Play Station II has been on the market for a year so is a step behind Microsoft's machine but has far better engineered games. As the experts explained it to me, the most dramatic improvement in this technology has been in the means and development of the games. Microsoft's game machine is expected to do very well but was aimed at the twenty-two year old game player and when you compare these machines head to head it is surprising what they have included. Sony has used "Firewire" a high speed data transfer method to give itself outstanding power and take full advantage of its DVD player. Microsoft included a 40GB had drive in its machine and an Ethernet connections so that it can play games over the Internet. As well as play games the Microsoft equipment allows for use of the Web via a high speed Internet connection. The remarkable thing about playing games on a screen is that there has been that feeling that it is something of a subculture and that really should not be the case. In our family there have been Nintendos, a Sony Play Station II and of course years of game playing on the computers around the house. Computer game playing was at one time thought to be nontransferable skills, however with improved games and technology game playing is actually a good way to get to know your computer and its abilities. Game playing on game machines does actually transfer to other activities. Many parents are worried about the high level of violence that some games involve and that this might be destructive to the developing attitudes of a child and there is some solid validity in these concerns. But like anything else without guidance and your involvement kids will get into things that are not always the best for them. There is a vast array of outstanding games for kids both on the computer and in game machines that are fun, develop cognitive skills and do not lead to mass murder. Today I watched as a couple of young adults took a Play Station II game involving racing all terrain vehicles and turned it into an adventure game by checking out the game's parameters and exploring what you can do with the game besides play the prescribed routine. Multi-player game activity has always been a part of modern screen game playing. In fact we played four rounds of the game shown below which dates back to the mid 90s when we first began playing this game involving exploration, conquest and winning it all. Last night's game involved five of us on five computers playing against one another in a knock down drag out game to see who would control the galaxy. This old game "Spaceward Ho!" is really a variation on monopoly one played via our network and we can play this same game with all five of us scattered all over the country playing the game via the Internet. It looks like games will always be with us and electronic screen based games are now very much an entrenched part of that experience.