Electronic Games and Entertainment – Where are they going?

First reading “A theory of Fun for Game Design” I agree with the direction of the author, where I feel there not enough learning of video games, on how they work and how to create one yourself. This cycle should change and I think this learning will be very intuitive for younger generations. “With the rise of electronic entertainment, we are seeing games reach a very prominent status in everyday life (Raphael Koster).” The article used the example of tic-tac-toe being more of a valuable lesson than a diversion, and to be honest a lot of kids reading and math levels are higher than before because of all the learning games created for them, it’s just entertainment, keeping kids engage and giving them a learning experience as well. But, only people who understands video games can understand that games can be valuable to us.

Second reading “16 trends that will define the future of video games” few things from the article that caught my attention was creating a social platform, gamers now have their own community with online gamming and for most it’s a great experience to find common interest, meet new people, and have an overall enjoyable experience. The generation of millennial are passing this down to there children we grew up with the foundation of video games and we’re only going to pass this down to our kids because it’s what we knew as entertainment. Second thing that caught my attention was games trending on social apps like Facebook and Instagram, games like Angry Bird and Subway Surfer and even Temple Run, all form this connection with social media and you can connect and compete with friends, not only our age groups are getting this entertainment but also kids ages 11 and under as well. More and more kids either have a smartphone or a tablet device. And thirdly the 360 degrees of freedom each platform adds something to the experience and a great example was the 3D printing or making a physical toys of games like Angry Bird and also they are making a Angry Bird film to add to the experience of playing the games. Another interesting aspect of gamming is the crowdsourcing outlets like YouTube game reviews are big, generates a lot of attention.

“How a Videogame God Inspired a Twitter Doppelgänger — and Resurrected His Career”

I think it is a great idea to create a game where the audience are in full control, as you can see from all social media and crowdsourcing outlets this works, to create a game where you are in charge of everything from beginning to end. For the game Populous it gave gamers the feeling of being video directors.