Hello again! This entry is overdue mostly because i am overdue king! However i have been super busy with life in general so i just haven’t had the time to sit down and actually complete this entry. For this week(actually last week) we talked about my favorite subject so far, which are video games! Now i say it is my favorite one because i can relate to it the most, seeing as video games are one of my main hobbies!
On march 6th looked at several topic, everything from video game culture and it history, to its terminology and how academic journals try to identify video games. Now in terms of video game terminology i think i would have a decent amount of knowledge and academic journals are rather dull in my opinion. However, what really caught my attention was how video game history unfolded several chain reactions which are recreated in similar ways still to this day and age!
History in general can be a rather boring or fun way to explore the origin on some of our favorite topics and interests. I for instance found the part about video game having a huge cultural impact in the aftermath of world war 2, (from the lecture on march 8th) really interesting! Mostly because i can draw a similar line between the positive and negative cultural influence that video games had and still have. Back then the cultural impact of video games changed the mentality of young people both in japan and usa based on how they interacted with video games. In japan in particular, in the aftermath of world war two they discovered not only great potential economically, but also a stimulating side of video games. While the video game developers used their tech from former military equipment to recreate some of most iconic video games and systems of our time.
Ultimately the pioneer games such as PONG, PACMAN and TETRIS gave rise to a new age of video games and video game systems, transforming the dull home TV into a video game platform. Sure enough longer down the road we got PC games which took over some of the market from the consoles that ruled the first era of gaming. Now the interesting part in my opinion is the influence these video games had during that age and our age now. Originally there was no intent of making video games as a never ending fun distraction but it developed more and more as such. People were hooked and used the interaction of video games to dull the everyday struggle and negativity with something that would be both social and fun! As the marked and technology grew to what it is today, we see similar trends to how video games influence people. We still used them as a escape from reality and still have fun playing games while having the ability to interact with others. As with anything that develops and changes, huge debate sparked about the influence of video games on today’s youth in general. Several countries such as the US, have questioned the influence of video games. In some extreme cases even linking them as a direct influence of certain behavior. An example would be a school shooting, where the shooter had been playing a certain types of video games prior the their actions. This the leading to the claim of certain influential behavior from the game had transitioned to the shooter and how he was thinking. This is just a bald statement, as it is literally impossible to prove a claim such as that one, but still begs the question whether or not certain games are safe to get consumed by? So it peeked my interest how video games were made as an side project out of military equipment scrap, to something that would be considered passively damaging and mind altering to the grade of the used being able to do the most unthinkable. I am fairly certain that the makers of today’s video games never had such an intent, but have video games transitioned into something else besides just an never ending fun distraction? Or have we just started to interpret them as something else judging on the direction they have developed? Hard to say, yet interesting topic to discuss in my opinion!
I however still believe in the magic of video games where they make up for some of the best moments in our life’s. Here is a clip from some of those moments from the gaming community!
. If you look very closely, my laptop shows a tweet of 
First off in the video game history section resourced from the Museum of Play exhibition, this patent machine made in the year 1940 is used to play the traditional game of NIM. NIM plays out where primarily two players lays downs a bunch of dots or sticks, and then pick out the dots or sticks – but avoiding to be the last dot or stick.
