Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 10 years or so, video games have become BIG business around the world. Consider this. Call Of Duty MW3, last year's best selling game, earned $3 billion dollars in sales in it's first week. Three Billion, and in seven days no less. The biggest movie of the year (The Avengers, fyi) took almost a month to collect that amount, and at cheaper prices then $59.99 for a new game.
I was introduced to Minecraft by my son, who was nine at the time. I would ask him to stop watching Minecraft videos, which he seemed addicted to. When he started playing, I asked him to get off the computer and get outside. All parents do this, but few of us take the time to truly understand what it is our kids are really doing on that computer. Well my son, now 10, has taught me a huge lesson.
Lately, there's been a lot of buzz about active video games being a new tech solution to the inactivity crisis in Canadian kids. While active video games -- also called exergames -- may seem like a plausible way to get kids to exercise more, a recent review of academic literature suggests this may not be the case.
Just when I think I've come to place of being comfortable in the video game industry, something happens that has made me question what I'm doing here. I'm talking about the harassment and hatred directed at feminist media critic and gamer Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian is experiencing a hostility that many women in the games industry have experienced to varying degrees for many years. And it's ugly.
One thing most of these people have in common is that they are challenged by some unnamed fears that hinder their success. These people have decided that by choosing to fail and sabotaging the various kinds of help given to them, they can "win." We can all feel Martin Sheen's pain about this kind of "winning."
Mark Rubin, executive producer at Infinity Ward, the studio behind the 'Call of Duty' series, says Internet service providers are holding back innovation with restrictive practices. Usage-based billing and throttling, where certain applications are slowed down, are obstacles to the games industry's advancement.