Articles - Snippits

Can you go back in time to the origins of video games? Where cute, harmless and completely unbelievable and mythical characters would tackle zany adventure in make-believe worlds far away from our own? Those heady days are long past now. Because a great amount of video games now use real world places, events and people as their storylines and settings. Whereas before, video games were a tool used to escape reality through diversion, they are now extensions of the reality in which we live in. Depending on your vantage point, that can be very good or very bad indeed.

Consider one of the most enduring and endearing video games in history: Super Mario Bros. There aren't too many games for the Xbox 360 where a plumber battles evil demented turtles that fling hammers at you. No matter how imaginative one's imagination could be, there is simply no way that such an occurrence could happen in this world, like, for real. So, the illusion of the game remains intact.

Now, if you look at today's video games for popular systems like the Microsoft Xbox 360 or the Sony Playstation Portable, you can clearly see that video games are now using real world issues as their premise. The fantasy world based video game will always exist and never become extinct on consoles like the Xbox 360. But, more and more games are using Iraq as their setting rather than a mushroom kingdom. Can you envision a 1980 game based on the Falkland Islands affair for the Xbox 360 or the Sony PSP? But, today, there are many video games using current events as a fantasy gaming world.

There are many theories as to the dearth of reality-based video games. Improved graphics, technology and game play make it easier to create the real world on the video game screen. Perhaps it's easier to steal an idea from the world of today than it is to create a whole new world with plot, characters, functions, missions, etc. Perhaps it's a calculated effort to hone in on frustrated individuals who can't really join the fight: battle those terrorist creeps that you hate so much from the comfort of your own home. In the latter instance, at least, it can make for a quick way to make a quick dollar.

It used to be easy to distinguish video games from reality. Reality had problems and issues, and there was nothing you could do about it. Video games, like the Microsoft Xbox 360, allow you to be the ultimate ruler of the universe contained within. Idea: why not combine the two, and give a video game player the complete control that video games provide into a real world situation in which otherwise, they feel powerless?

It seems that today, a gamer can watch the news, get upset and then do something about it in the real world that exists inside their Sony PSP or Xbox. The merits of such a union is a matter for another debate altogether.