Considering how crazy life has been this week with school and work picking up steam, I really haven't been using much media. My husband and I haven't even been sitting down to watch our shows at the end of the day this week. However, I did enjoy watching my husband play a Lord of the Rings video game for about an hour one evening. He rarely plays video games now and used to play only occasionally as an adolescent. His favorites were games like The Legend of Zelda, and Fire Emblem. While these are typically single player games that may seem more isolating, my husband has very fond memories of playing these games while his siblings watched and participated by giving advice and claiming some of the characters as their own. He also has fond memories of watching his parents or siblings play and participating with them in similar ways. For him and his family, these games allowed them to have bonding time all together. After our lecture on video games, I decided to analyze this type of video game use that my husband is used to and that he participates in with me now.
Amount: The maximum amount of time my husband's family ever spent on video games like this when he was a kid was two hours, perhaps once per week or every two weeks. More often than not, they were only spending an hour every other week or so. This is similar to the amount my husband and I participate in this activity together now.
Content: The content in these games is generally questing, where characters are sent on special missions to retrieve certain objects while completing different puzzles. There is some mildly violent content in these games though. The characters generally have to go through "bad guys" to get to the objects in question. Often these battles play out as the characters take turns with the villains in dealing blows back and forth. There is generally no blood or gore, but the idea is still to fight with and kill the villains.
Context: As mentioned above, my husband and his family liked to play these games in a familial and social context. They only really enjoyed the game if they were interacting with each other about it. I find my husband feels this way about playing now too. He often talks me through what he is doing so that I can participate with him.
Structure: These games are played in a typical video game structure with a hand-held remote and TV screen. They do involve quite a bit of 2D controling of a 3D world, or whatever that phenomenon was called from class. :)
Mechanics: The mechanics of these games range from rather unrealistic, to much more close to reality. Most of the games my husband plays would be considered fairly unrealistic in picture quality. The only game his family plays that would be considered realistic would be their latest Zelda game.
I've enjoyed bonding with my husband over these games that are nostalgic for him. I still would rather have fairly strict limits on time spent playing video games in the future for our children. However, I do think they could present some good clean fun if we choose to use them in the right ways. It was interesting to me to learn the good and the bad of video games, and to apply them to myself, my husband, and his family.
Comments
Post a Comment