My Love of Video Games

I just started playing a new video game recently.  It's called Kingdom Hero's.  Seeing as it a new game to me I'm a little confused about it still. You start off in China somewhere about the time period of I want to say 800-1100ad or so.  So you make a character and you can choose to be either a warrior, fencer, tactician,  or a conjuror.  Starting off as usual you have to be trained on how to do the basics of the game and then when you finish you are given the choice to serve under three generals or rulers of a kingdom.  They are called Cao Cao, Lui Be, or San Gui, or something like that.  Once you've picked your leader you can go into there kingdom and do quests and stuff.  My favorite part so far is that depending on what type of character you choose you can have body guards or soldiers who fight with you.  Warriors can only have two because of how strong they are, fencers can have 4, conjurors can have four as well, and tacticians can have the most at a total of six.  I chose to be a fencer seeing as they are good at both close and long range attack.  Sometimes its just easier to shoot at your enemies from afar than go hit on top of the hit face to face.  Now I'm level thirty-three and a little stuck because I've completed all quests I can do but I'm not strong enough to move on to the next city.  Ah well. I just have to sit and grind experience until I reach level forty I guess.

My Love of Video Games

Back to what I love the most.  education about the many different types of video games out there, or at least the types of video games that i play the most.  One such type of video game that I play is known as a Real Time Based Strategy Game, usually for the PC or laptop.  One example of this type of game would be Rome total War.  It's where u take control of one of the great leaders of Rome and build your army sand take over the world or some thing like that.  You have to make certain that you have income, food stuff, paying tour army, and making certain sanitation is available.  Some of these types of games even continue playing while your not on.  If you farming in the game to feed your army it will still be going even when you log out and leave the PC.  I like the fact that even this is considered a video game you are still responsible for running a successful campaign and a country.  If the farming goes bad your people go hungry and hate you for it, therefore your armies moral will be way down and it will not perform properly in your next major battle.  Just like if you don't pay your army, your troops will defect and join the enemy leaving you with very little man power.  so you have to be a successful businessman, farmer and a few other things to win the game.

My Love of Video Games

Happened to walk in on my bosses husband just yesterday and he was watching the history channel.  Would you know it they were doing a documentary about the technology and history of video games.  Sadly I missed most of it because I was working, but that's ok I have the internet to help me watch it or learn more about it whenever i feel like it.  So I researched and found out that the very first video games was called Tennis fot two and was invented by William Higinbotham in 1958 who was a nuclear physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project and lobbied for nuclear nonproliferation as the first chair of the Federation of American Scientists.  people Tennis for Two saw a two-dimensional view of a tennis court on the oscilloscope screen, which used a cathode-ray tube similar to a black and white television tube. The ball, a brightly lit, moving dot, left trails as it bounced to alternating sides of the net. Players served and volleyed using controllers with buttons and rotating dials to control the angle of an invisible tennis racquet’s swing.  Now look where we are in 53 years.  Video games sure have come far in that period of time.  Now we can swing a remote around and play the Wii.  Graphics have really advanced as we can see with the PS3 and XBOX 360.

My Love of Video Games

On my last post I talked about Grand Fantasia the MMORPG that I am currently playing.  Its where u go online with people all over the world to do quests and have fun together.  That however is only one of the many types of video game that is out there.  One other type of video game that I love is the Action Adventure type, where you control a character and go through a story line solving puzzles and quests.  Trying to find out how and what happens at the end of the game.  The Legend of Zelda series is one such Action Adventure game that comes into mind.  In the game the only editing you can do is usually change the name and that's it, remember your controlling the main character of a story line.  If you don't change the name then its always Link as the default.  You take Link on a quest to usually save a kingdom and a princess, usually a girl named Zelda.  Pretty straight and simple huh?  Not quite, there are all these bad guys, puzzles, and big dungeons sometimes massive to explore and solve.  Be it pushing around blocks, trying to figure out how to do specific things with what you have.  Which are a bunch of tools that you have to collect and the more tools you gather the harder the game gets.  Tools such as special boots that makes you sink to the bottom of whatever body of water your at, of course a jacket that enables you to breathe underwater kinda comes in handy at that point in time too.  There's also a tool that you shoot at specific types of walls and you are pulled toward that location.  You get many tools and instruments in the game that its a little confusing at times which ones you should use at what particular place.  That's why I love this type of video game.  So many things you have to complete that the game takes forever to beat. 

My Love of Video Games

There is nothing that I love more than a brand new video game that I just can't seem to put down once i start playing it.  Grand Fantasia is one of them.  Even though its probably not a new game, it is to me.  I have just started playing it around august and I haven't been able to quit yet.  Grand Fantasia is an online MMORPG, (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).  Which is where many people from all over the world come together to play a game and you can jion up to battle it out or do stuff online. 
In Grand Fantasia you are able to interact with people all across the world and join them to do quest battles, or just to chat and have a very good time.  This is a fantasy quest operating type of MMORPG, which means you have to make a specific type of character in the game.  Now there are several types of classes but you only get to choose from four at the beginning once you hit level 5.  You are a novice from level one to five.  Once you hit level five you can choose between one of four classes a fighter, hunter, spell caster, or acolyte.  Have to rewind here in a second, before even starting the game you have to create your own character they give you the obvious choice between a guy/girl with different characterizations on how you want look.  You'll have the choice to change your hair design, color and facial expressions, stuff like that.  It's not easy making a name for your character because either somebody has the name you want or you just can't think up of one.
I consider this a great game for anybody of all ages.

My Love of Video Games

Ah, so happy with the title.  As I was talking about before in an earlier post, there is always this constant battle between children and their parents about playing video games.  I also stressed the fact that because of this unreachable agreement between me and my mother, we have not spoken to each other since i was 17.  Now I am 22, and looking back i can see now that if only she and I had given ground and actually sat down with each other and talked it over we would probably be happy and still on speaking terms. 
No I am not a counselor or a specialist by any means necessary.  I just love video games enough that i believe parents and children should be able to come together and talk about it.  Parents should sit down and listen to there kids ideas and their reasons why they enjoy playing video games.  Not just say OK we'll sit down I'll do this and then manipulate, suggest, coerce, or even just act like I listened but your still going to do it my way because I'm the parent and your just a little child.  That is not the way you as the parent I believe should act.  Yes your the parent and you must exert control and not let them walk all over you like trash.  But! There is no reason and I don't see why it would hurt you so much to actually hear other opinions from others than just yourselves.  Yes, I am talking about four years old and up.  Everything the kid has to say is important, you'd listen to them if they said some guy tried to get them to get in there car on there way home school wouldn't you?  Listen for once to what we the children have to say, please.  I understand that not every family has the same problem with there kids playing video games, its all on what they are interested in at the time.
Am I saying that you should allow them to play however long they want to and whenever?  No I am most definitely not.  You are the parent, take control but with restrictions.  Once again this is where the sitting down and speaking with the kid is all about set up specific times and allowances on when they can play.  Make a chart if you have to, in fact i think most parents should.  Place it where the child will see it everyday multiple times a day.  Explain why schooling comes 1st before games, and not just viedo games as well.  This can include sports and other such extacurricular activities.  Limit time on weekends and when friends come over but allow them to play with friends.  Use it as a reward if they do well on homework reward them with fifteen more minutes or so.  You as the parent just need to use your own discretion.  As I've said before I love video games a lot and looking back on my experience with playing and fighting with my parent I think some of this might help keep parents and children from separating and only bring them closer.

My love of video games

The title to the blog basically says it all.  I love video games more than anything else in the world.  Many people always come up with the very same question whenever I say that comment.  Why?  Why do I love video games so much?  Whats so fun about sitting in front of a box with a thingy mu-jig in your hand seemingly doing absolutely nothing, but staring at the box, even for hours at a time.  So I usually smile at them and ask them the same exact question.  So here is what I am going to do, I am going to explain my love for video games through several random posts hoping that others will finally come to realize that my love for video games is not an illness, that I have some sort of disorder, that video games are bad for children, or even that I need to go out and get a life.

Go do something besides sit in front of the TV for a change.  Play outside, every other kid your age is out there playing football and soccer, why don't you go join them?  I really wish you wouldn't sit it front of the TV all day long.  If all you do is sit in front of the TV playing video games you'll become a couch potato.  Get off your butt and go exercise.  Is your homework done yet, you can't play until its done.  Your still in front of that TV?  I you have heard at least one of these similar expressions from your mom or dad then you must've heard a thousand more.  Parents just do not understand i say, why we play video games for hours on end like we do.  We enjoy it mommy and daddy.  Why do you work on cars dad?  Why do you watch QVC mommy?  Why do you garden and play in the dirt mommy? Why do you like to collect trains daddy?  Wouldn't it be great that every time they asked us why we like playing video games we could ask them the exact same question just about something that they do constantly.  Saying the same word over and over again.  Why do they do that all the time?  If they were honest with us and weren't trying so hard to stop us from doing what we find comfortable and can relax by doing.  They might understand better why we play video games so much, instead of wasting there time and effort to get us to stop. 

The bad news is, I don't speak to my mom anymore or any of my family for that matter.  Why, u ask.  Well, because I love video games!  Twenty-two years old and I am still playing.  My mother tried so hard and punished me so much for playing video games that it drove me away from my family.  I'm very serious, I haven't spoken to my mom since I was 17 years old, and just over the fact that we disagreed over me playing video games.  Now I 'm not saying she was wrong in her attempt to try and get me to do other things in my life.  But did she have to be so adamant about it, and discipline me to the point that now later in life as I'm now going to college to create video games and working on computers to better them.  Maybe parents and kids will look at this blog and strengthen there bonds.  Maybe they will both come to realize that video games can and cannot be an obsession.  All I can say is that as I blog along I'm going to try to explain the best I can about why I love video games.  Kids may start opening up and talking to there parents about games.  Parents may see that video games are not evil and out to hurt there kids because in the long one, like me, parents and children need each other in more ways than one.