Archive for Videogames

Neural plasticity

It’s a wonderful thing, this adaptivity of the human brain.  My oldest child (7) has been a FPS player since he was 4.  He picked up very quickly on how to navigate a virtual environment, and FPS’es have been his preferred gametype (although now that he can read well, he seems to be developing an affinity for sim games like Civ: Revolution.

Except now there’s Prince of Persia.  Now, my son and I have a long history with the POP titles.  When he was 3, I was playing my way through POP: Sands of Time.  He still remembers it as “the scooching game” and he’s dabbled with the sequels, but never really gotten into them.

Anyway, back on track, he’s been playing this game, for about three hours (over the past two days) and he already seems to be an expert in the game mechanics.  The game is *totally* different from a FPS, the controls are used for different things, but he seems to have adapted right away.  I would have thought, with him being a FPS guy, he would have his reflexes programmed to use the triggers to shoot, etc. but I haven’t heard a single “stupid controller” complaint out of him yet.  In fact, he has the Prince dancing across the walls like he’s only ever played this type of game.

Bella Sara…..

I fear I may have done my daughter a disservice.  Perhaps not, but of my three she is the most transactional in her game preferences.  She enjoys earning points so she can use them for new stuff, and she’s been insane for her own trading cards since her older brother has gotten into Pokemon.  So for Christmas she received a booster pack of Bellasara trading cards.

Now, I don’t know how familiar you are with CCG’s (collectible card games), but Bellasara is nicely done, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any actual “gameplay” with the cards (unlike Magic: The Gathering, or Pokemon).  Each card has a different horse, a different saying and a long cryptic number.  You go to the bellasara.com website and input the number to have the horse added to your stable.

She’s spent every spare minute of the past two days on that website, despite the extremely slow rate at which it runs on her machine.  Did I mention she’s 5?

The interesting thing is that this has suddenly sparked an even greater interest in games in general (or perhaps we just coincided with one of those “developmental stages” all the books tell you about.  She’s been playing Patapon, Lego: Batman, Spore, now she started Prince of Persia, but has asked to go to Tomb Raider instead because she likes playing a female lead better than a male.

She and I may someday have something in common after all 🙂