During my time in Japan, I've been doing plenty of research on the games industry via websites and podcasts. Since my ultimate goal is to break in and get my creative juices flowing via game creation, I feel like this is the best way to gain some peripheral career experience. I still have to focus on actually creating games (hopefully after this semester ends, because learning Japanese is really time consuming!), but this research helps me get an idea of what is out there, and what may come beyond the horizon.
Mobile gaming has taken off big time. The Iphone and it's application store, though cluttered with useless junk and seriously in need of quality control, has given game developers a great platform to release high quality games at the low end market price. More importantly, it has extended social gaming away from the stagnant PC screen to the sidewalks of the city and the department stores of suburbia. We could see further implementation of GPS coordinate recognition with future game designs, and the possibility of encoding information into different geographical areas. Imagine: the next zombie game takes place in your home town, and you need to hunt down all the zombies while doing your grocery shopping!
I was thinking about a way to use games to bridge the gap between the young and old generations. When I think about the older generation, I imagine they are confused and maybe afriad of the younger generation's obsession with video games, seeing it merely as a "time waster." With more and more research proving the opposite, it's time to focus on the positive use of games.
Considering that one day I will become an old gamer with deteroirated visual/motor skills, what would I want to play with my kids or grandkids, who DO have the fresh reflexes available? My advantage over the younger generation is not only the 30+ years of gaming experience, but also the decades of world knowledge I will have accumlated. There could be some interesting ways of fusing the Skills of the Young with the Knowledge of the Old. Perhaps a mech game that demands so much of the player, that in fact it requires 2 players to succeed; the younger rides in the cockpit, pilots the mech with their superior motor coordination, and focuses on the micro encounters. Meanwhile, the elder focuses on the macro-war and declares strategies/mission objectives from a real-time updating battlefield scenario so as to affect the larger war at hand.
What about the current elderly population's invlovement in our lives? I think we teenagers/ young adults are sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that "old people are useless" when it comes to play. However, I can remember spending about 3 years watching my Poppop dominate Jeopardy and The Price Is Right from his livingroom couch. His gaming knowledge is actually quite extensive; so why not harness that in conjunction with my advanced hand-eye coordination? I'd love to see a game design that demands both real world knowledge and fine motor skills (and comeon, we can do better than Mario Is Missing).
The Wii has got the right idea with Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Okay, I know it's not an effective means for the 15-35 age group to get into supreme athletic shape, but it has gotten middle aged moms to buy video games for themselves while taking their kids to Gamestop. I'm optimistic here, I think this could be the start of a trend that pulls in the older generation, as well as some gaming skeptics, to buy and play video games with us. I wouldn't be suprised if this becomes the case, since the video game industry is doing very will in our currently recessive economy and still has room for growth.
Once we've converted the elders and skeptics, we can move on to the final step... world domination! MWAHAHAHA!
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