My History of Play & Games

When i think of games I usually think of video games. Video games have become the antithesis of games, leaving board games, logic games, and cards games seemingly absolete.

I had my first video game system when I was eight years old. Like most I started with Super Mario. I absolutely loved the game. I loved how my character progressed, with harder levels to pass, more dangerous bad guys, and the evolution of the storyline. I wanted to keep playing because i wanted to know what would happen next, what was going to happen, what world I was going to unlock, and what characters I was going to meet. But, by the time I was 10 there was a new game system, my other one was obsolete, and I just stopped playing video games. I had a brief stint with videos games by the time I was 14, playing games like Zelda and King Kong. By then the games were so much more advanced requiring better handle of the controller, but I was still able to manage. I left the video gaming world, and didn't return until I was almost 20. By then games like Tom Clancy, and other combat games were popular, gamers could communicate with other gamers, and you needed completely advanced control of the controller to even move your player. The scenes moved so fast my eyes could barely keep up, the options were unlimited, and the story evolved but without a direct path or in a linear movement. I decided that I had missed the video gaming world, too obsolete to be useful and I haven't played since.

Learning about the theory of games and game design has made me want to learn more about this world again. What learning opportunities are available from playing video games? How can they help prepare a student for 21st century skills? And what useful knowledge and experiences are gamers getting, that someone like myself is missing?

These are the questions I hope to answer as I begin my journey into the world of gaming.

#game #gamedesign