Essay #2

Generation In Motion

The generation of today’s young children is excelling faster than any other generation before it. Kids are becoming more involved with technology and globalization each day. Technology is now almost doubling every year compare to the last ten years. Along with technological advances in communication and learning, the entertainment industry is getting a significant face lift. Video games have been growing in popularity for a few generations now but recently in the past couple years they have become more and more popular with children. With games out now such as Brain Age, My Word Coach, and Flash Focus that play on the portable Nintendo DS learning has turned into an enjoyable past time that can be accessed anywhere. Although some games are based around learning other new games as well as systems are focusing on ways to get children up and interacting compared to sitting and vegetating. The new games and systems that are forcing kids to become more active by illustrating the origin and the future of the active motion gaming industry can all be summed up as the generation in motion.

Active motion video games are not new to the gaming world in fact they have been for almost a decade now. We first start to see these games arrive and boom in the U.S. by 1999. The development of music and dance games started in Japan with Konami, a global video game developing company, in 1998. According to www.gamessages.com, Konami has produced and released 17 different forms of Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) into the arcades and 19 versions to the console systems. DDR was one of the first games to involve active motion controls. The control is set up as a dance pad that has an up, down, left, and right arrow along the diagonal arrows and start and select buttons. The pad would be placed on the ground then the player would select a song to which they would like to “dance” to also what level of difficultly they would like the song to be presented to them. Once the song would start a series of directional arrows would scroll up the screen from bottom to top and once the arrow reached a box of the same direction the player was to press the correlating directional arrow on the pad with their foot. If the user hit the button at the exact moment the arrows were lined up they would receive a perfect but if they were off slightly they would receive a tanking of “great” or “ok”. Depending on what ranking the user received they would accumulate points that were assigned to that ranking the addition of the points would then result in an overall final score. The player with the higher score would win the game. So active motion gaming was born and eye to movement coordination was introduced to the gaming world.

In today’s society however the movements are more advanced and involved the hands rather than the feet. The newest gaming system to integrate this technology is the Nintendo Wii. The Wii was developed by Nintendo in 2006. Originally called the Revolution during development by May, 2006 Nintendo revealed the new name and tried to answer some of the developing question around the system in a press release presented by Matt Atwood, the public relations manager for Nintendo at the time. As he explained “Wii sounds like “we,” which emphasizes this console is for everyone.” He continued to state that “Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd” (Berghammer). Once the Wii released in November of 2006 it did in fact revolution the way people gamed. The Nintendo Wii is a small rectangle box that can support Wii software which is shaped like a simple computer CD or GameCube software which is a small CD. The console then has a receiver that is connected through the back of the box that picks up the movements of the controller(s). The controller is a wireless frequency emitting device that is shaped like an “I” to emphasize the “I” in Wii. The player moves the controller around to control the motions of the Mii, an avatar created by the user to represent the user, during activities such as golf, tennis, baseball, boxing, and bowling. Other games use a controller attachment known as the “Nunchuck” this attachment has a joystick and two buttons but it can also sense movements like the controller. This new style of control has forced people to actually stand and move around while playing the games that come on the Nintendo Wii which makes the people playing this system more active than other gamers who can simply control their games by sitting down and moving a joystick.

Only a few years ago a “Gamer” was considered someone who sat around and did nothing but beat levels and posted all the secrets to the newest video games just released. Today a gamer could be anyone from your grandma to your five year old sister. The Nintendo Wii is the cause for all of this new profiling. Now there are two different types of gamers: casual and hardcore. The casual gamers are the ones that play an average of six to eight hours a week this group usually the families, small children, elderly, and occasionally college students. These new gamers have been transformed by the gaming industry with the new generation active motion technology consoles. With games such as Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart hitting the Wii gaming console parents are finding themselves having more time spent with their children doing actives that they both find enjoyable. This bringing more families closer together and helping parents connect with their children without spending hours of time together or even leaving their living rooms. Super Smash Brothers has become the leading game in the Wii collection so far according to numerous blogs and gaming websites. The game lets you take classic Mario and other fictional characters from old school games and duke it out. With the innovation of the Wii Fit more and more people are even able to get their daily dose of exercise. The game includes a balancing board that simulates strength training, yoga, balance training, and aerobics. This not only helps people stay in shape but also helps rehabilitation centers get people up and moving in much more enjoyable activities. The fit has proven to help people better balance their overwhelming concern with body fat index. The game has a systematic way of figuring out exactly how much body fat a person has to them and it devises a schedule to help them better maintain or lose weight depending on what section of activates they enjoy most of the game.

Whatever is in store for the future of gaming it seems only our children will be able to tell but with the way technology is going it won’t be long till we see entire virtual worlds being created. With the games that are out now which help children to learn numbers and mathematical equations before they have ever seen a classroom; along with the video game systems that let you control a uniquely defined character creation by just waving your hands who knows exactly what will come of our ever growing gaming community.