Gamertell

According to a recent survey by Information Solutions Group and PopCap Games, gaming can help parents and grandparents bond with their children. Most of the people involved in the survey agreed that gaming can be beneficial in areas such as hand-eye coordination, mental exercise and memory. As some games are now used in therapy and education, parents see them as a beneficial learning tools and are getting involved with them and this leads to bridging the gap between the generations and gives them a common interest.

It’s good to see that gaming is starting to lose its reputation as a vice and a waste of time. I remember when my parents thought of my consoles as some weird gadget only I understood and they couldn’t get why I spent hours playing with those things. Now even they are into some games like Tetris and web based sudokus and although it would be cool to catch them playing Rainbow Six on-line, I guess it’s one step at a time.

I think games are becoming an important part of our lives as a mainstream form of entertainment. Titles are appealing to broader audiences and innovations - like the Wii - are making it easier for people who never considered themselves gamers to have a good time and to interact in a different way with friends and family.

On-line play has also been an important factor by allowing games to become a social activity involving friends and communities but I believe this is just the beginning. People who are now experiencing as casual gamers will become more interested as they play different titles. They will start looking for stories or genres that appeal to them and maybe with time it’s going to be like movies or books. As mainstream authors and producers get more involved with games, we are going to get better stories and higher production values and, maybe some day, we’ll see a series of games as famous as the Harry Potter books.

The future looks promising for games and gamers. As more and more people get involved, we will get better and more innovative games and different ways to interact with them. Maybe in a not so distant future the term “casual gamer” will be just an obscure reference, something heard of but rarely seen, perhaps something as unusual as a “casual TV watcher”.

Read [ TechShout!] Also read [Game Guru]