Gamertell

Ft. Worth Star Telegram sports columnist David Thomas had an interesting piece Wednesday (January 21, 2009) about playing video games with his son. Thomas admits he hasn’t picked up a game in years and his son, well, he had a son’s natural desire to whoop on his old man at something.

Thomas thought they would play a golf game but found out he wasn’t going to get through the character creation in less a half hour (games didn’t have character creation the last time Thomas played, obviously). When you think about it, we have a lot of gaming conventions that would be alien to even the most hardcore gamer from 25-30 years ago.

Since there were only a few minutes left before his son’s bedtime, Thomas opted for a racing game and realized game controllers have way more buttons than they used to. The writer mistakenly thought a catastrophic wreck with a bus ended the game. Oh no, in this day and age any game worth its purchase price has rewinding of time or some such gimmick. The writer credits today’s kids’ need for instant gratification for that development in gaming and he may be on to something.

I don’t know if Thomas and his son will continue playing games together but I hope so. I’ve been blessed with two baby boys who are already expressing a keen interest in what’s going on with that Xbox 360 controller. I can’t wait to see what games they’ll want to play and where the industry is when they’re my age. Looking at how far we’ve come since my Atari 2600 days, I can’t even fathom what kind of games we’ll have to play in 20 years. Can a setup that works like The Matrix be very far behind?

Read [Ft.Worth Star Telegram]