A girl who was never a video game fanatic, but rather had a phase where she played the Wii

A game which was popular in 2006 is now remembered as an important childhood pastime.

I would never describe myself as someone who loved videogames. As a young girl I played with dolls and the toy kitchen I had in my house, but I never sat in front of the television to sit with a remote control for hours upon end. Until one specific product came out. The Wii. The moment I saw it appear on my tv screen I knew it was something I needed to own. So for Hanukkah I begged my parents to get it for me. Being the oldest of three girls, I knew my sisters and I would love to have something like this to entertain ourselves, as well as our friends we would have over all the time.

The Wii is a video game consul created by Nintendo in 2006. It comes with a port, as well as a remote to use. 

            Whenever I was over at a friend’s house that had a brother, he would always be playing violent games. Things like that never interested me. So I think the reason that the Wii excited me so much was that there were really no violent games advertised for this product. Another thing that excited me was their element of sports. You could use the controller to play any sport you wanted. Being someone with zero athletic ability, this was a way I could play any sport provided on the program, and not have to worry about incoordination. As long as you had adequate space available in a room, you were free to flail your arms as much as you wanted and not have to worry about moving objects hitting you in the process.
              I remember when I was younger I would go to my cousins house and play with their x box Rock Band. I never had the opportunity to play the drums or the guitar so even as a young girl I enjoyed this. Soon after the Wii came out, they offered their own version of Rock Band. I had to have it. Rock Band was probably the coolest game that the wii offered. It gave everyone a chance to play together. With 4 controllers everyone could play a different instrument in the game and play together. And once again, you needed to have minimal talent to play this game, so it made me as a young girl feel like I had musical abilities. The game also exposed us to older music we had never heard before. Classic rock songs that my parents used to listen to or songs we would rarely hear on the radio were the song choices. It was nice to learn something from an older generation while still doing an activity that was very current.

            A classic game that people on any Nintendo device have heard of was Super Mario Brothers. There was a plethora of variations of this game. Everyone knew who Mario and Luigi were, so it was a fun game when you got to choose the different characters you wanted to play as. I had Super Mario Brothers on my Nintendo DS, so it was cool to see them come alive bigger on my television screen.

           

           People altogether found more excitement with their cell phones alone, rather than group activities around a television.

          My sisters and I played with our Wii for what seems like maybe a year or two. We were always playing new games that we would see advertised on commercials. But after some time we just lost interest. There began to be new ways to entertain us. The rise in Netflix as well as well as other activities became more exciting for younger kids, and older kids that I knew started to grow out of it. I think the reason I stopped playing was just because it wasn’t keeping my attention for long anymore. Also, some of the games required movement and I was either too exhausted from other activities to do it, or just didn’t want to get up. And if you don’t get up you don’t get the full experience and don’t do well in the game. The iphone started getting big around that time as well. The iphone had many games you could play in the palm of your hand rather than looking at a television screen. People altogether found more excitement with their cell phones alone, rather than group activities around a television.

            As I talked about earlier, there was no violence in the videogames that I played on the Wii, which was one of the reasons I chose it over another game system. However, violence in videogames is one of the main concerns when it comes to videogames itself. Some think that the violence can affect a person in a negative way in the future. Others disagree, but the debate still exists. The content from the Rock Band game was taken from various areas of pop culture specifically having to do with music, as well as fashion. And within the games there were massively multiplayer online games, as well as massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The chapter explains that players of early console games have grown up and continued to play. I didn’t start playing at a young age, so this connects in the way that I don’t continue to play today.

Some statistics of behavior which is responsive to which type of video game someone plays. 

Question 6 Page 184