Interactive Entertainment

As someone who routinely procrastinates blog posts in favor of going on one more quest, I’m excited to discuss interactive entertainment and video games this week.

1. What I mostly wrote my paper about was the use of narratives in games. While I know my opinion, and that of the research I did, I’m curious to as to what the class thinks. Are games capable of telling stories or narratives on the same level as movies, books, or TV? Or are they a different type of narrative entirely?

2. The Xbox Kinect recently came out recently, which for those of you who don’t know, is basically a way of playing video games without a controller. While the technology might be cool, the reviews for the games seem to suck, at least from what I’ve seen. Aside from the novelty and usage for family dance games, what practical entertainment uses can be gained from controllerless games?

3. As Lackaff mentioned, games are a huge industry, where the cash flows despite a down economy. Yet, they don’t quite have the mass appeal that other media do. More so than any other medium, video games are associated with specific demographics. Why is this, and why are games not as prevalent in our culture as they are in our economy?

Tags: framing, video games