This week saw a BBC Panorama documentary attempt to explore the dangers of addictions to gaming. I thought I would give myself a few days before writing about it as at the time the programme struck me as intensely annoying.
That is not to say I am not concerned about addiction or any of the harmful affects of the industry and its content but it did seem to be wandering into Daily Mail territory rather.
Many of the examples of excessive addiction seemed to be related to parents suggesting they had no idea what their kids were doing. That is of course a little strange as unlike the more worrying addictions that are drug related, most of the long term gaming will happen in the comfort of your own home on a nice warm PC or console connected to the internet.
Clearly some parents will not appreciate the intensity of the gaming experiences that their kids are enjoying but if they are not sleeping/eating/going to school etc then you would surely have a duty to spot that? Thats easy to say with hindsight of course.
The show aimed to inform us that there was little recognition or research into the addictive dangers of games and that the industry is in some way ignoring the fact. I do agree that dismissing it as an industry as of no consequence because there is not scientific evidence suggesting a link between games and addiction is probably not a smart way forward. We all know how addictive games can be especially when you combine the social media factors into them. This is of course something that got lost in the show. An addiction to a single player game is very different to an addiction to a multiplayer/clan/MMO based game. Whilst extremes of anything are probably not good the fact that people are focussed on working with other people to achieve their goals does alter the problem space a little.
The show managed to travel to South Korea to show the scope of the supposed problem too. It pointed out there were professional leagues, televised and a national obsession and there were coming appearing “over here” as if that in itself was some terrible consequence of games. Obviously an entire nation watching some overpaid athletes kick a piece of inflated leather around on some grass every saturday is so much better?
I tweeted at the time that life is a collection of addictions, things we attend to for various periods of time, unbalanced addictions are ones where the collections of things that are attended to are smaller that the “normal”. If the object of your obsession is generally destructive then it would appear to be on the bad side of the spectrum, however if the thing you spend all your time doing is enriching or helping your life and others, where new skills are being practiced, new bonds being formed then it really is not so much to be worried about?
Again the counterpoint to all this is the extremes, so yes those extremes are bad, but to damn an entire art form with all its genres as being the worst thing to happen to us, possibly due to not understanding it, would seem foolish.
Instead of simply suggesting the games suck you in and keep you there and you need to be pulled away to some sort of “real life” the focus should be:

1. What is that is so compelling that people pay to engage in these activities and become so involved in the powerful medium that they approach addict status?
2. How can that game design, technology and human willingness to participate be harnessed for the supposed worthy things that people should otherwise be doing?
3. What are the attributes and aspects of these addictions relating to human relationships, where the game is online, versus single player obsession?
4. Examine how we can embrace the creative and technical medium that has arrived at our doors and be proud of what it can do.

It is difficult to reconcile the ideas. “You should stop playing games and do something more worthwhile as games are silly” combined with “Wow these games are really powerful things we need to keep an eye on them” which are almost used in every sentence of the show.
It does end with the sentiment that the presenter will keep an eye on his kids games use just to make sure they are not falling prey to anything, but that should have been the starting sentence IMHO.
As for it being “real” from my personal point of view I have always been a gamer, it used to be that playing games was just fun, some were a little addictive and distracting, then it turned into needing to know how they worked, which became an obsession with technology that has carried me through my entire career to whatever point I am at now. Maybe I am a functioning games addict, but it could just be they are not all that terrible after all?

Like many of my fellow Xbox 360 owners we now have a Kinect at home. The good news is it just works. The bad news is that it makes you do things like this.

I was interested to see how the predlets took to it. They really wanted to play the raft game as that is what they has seen Sy and I play on The Cool Stuff Collective so they did have some advance notice about how it should work.
It worked well setting up their accounts and it also coped well with the relative size differences between us all.
Kinect adventures was an instant hit and playable by everyone. Dance Central though is the killer app IMHO. When elemming came home from work she ended up spending a few hours grooving away, and unlike me was a natural at it.
The Fighters Uncaged game seems the weakest of the bunch we had, it felt it should be better, it is still fun hitting and kicking but you have to be a bit more careful with your form and what registers. Also the side effect of no controller is of course no force feedback or rumble that you tend to get in a fight game. This is not an issue in a dance game as, well, you are dancing. Obviously also the fight game needs to cope with any move any time but the dance can have a rough idea about where you should be and adjust its tolerances accordingly.
A quick demo of Joyride proved to me that I do not want to spend hours not holding a fake steering wheel, though there is a request from predlet 2.0 to have a go at that so I will see how he gets on.
Kinectimals has only just arrived in the post so I will hold fire on commenting, though I think it will be brilliant 🙂
Andy Piper was online on kinect last night but as we were exploring the games and bouncing around we did not get to try the video kinect, but the usual thing on xbox of getting a message, finishing what you are doing and then routing around to find the request or message which by that time the person has gone to do something else. So apologies Andy 🙂
If you have an xbox 360 there really is no reason to not have a Kinect, if you have kids all the better. It will be interesting to see the control methods get used in interesting ways over the next few years too, and maybe it evolve to the desktop and let us control many other devices.

I am a big fan of the current crop of music games. It could seem that games that merely have you follow a pattern in time with music are somehow lazy gameplay, but what has happened with all the music games is that degrees of expression and choice flow into the patterns that you follow. A prime example is DJ Hero 2. The styles of music may not be to everyones taste, though the set list is full of songs that everyone will have heard rather than esoteric club tracks.
The mixes that you play involve a certain amount of pattern following using the controller to tap notes, move the cross fader or do very flattering scratches that fit in with the tunes. However they have introduced some freestyle elements. These really get you to feel the music you are playing and feel part of it.
One if freestyle scratching, so for a short period how you move the platter rather than just the speed of moving alters the sound. The other and more obvious is the freestyle crossfade. Here the two songs are playing together and you live mix back and forth to create a unique sound. There are some visual cues on the track as to where big gaps and breaks are but it really is effective.

I cannot claim to be a DJ, though I do dabble with audio editing packages, yet this may not make me a DJ but it really does make me feel like one. That also means that it has my attention and hence I am listening to the music track on the game (around 80 mixes) rather than listening to any other music source. It is not passive listening though, I feel I am learning a bit more about the tunes I know well, finding a new vocabulary of musical interaction in how the mixes have been created and also it is a performance. If other people are around and you go wrong it feels bad, so you want to make it sound good.
On the Xbox 360 you also have the chance to use your own avatar as the DJ. This adds yet another sense of depth to the proceedings.
So yes, its a plastic turntable with a few buttons playing some old tunes mixed together on a games console but it ticks a lot of other buttons in understanding motivations, ways to learn, expressiveness and entertainment.
And by the way notice the subtle coca cola product placement in the photo.
Then there’s Rockband 3 …… thats for another post once I get my 102 button guitar