Interaction design (Task 20)

How do games interact with us the player? There is so much out there that companies have put forward to help with your gaming life, of course depending on what platform you play on.
My first game that I found more interactive back then was; Bitmap brothers; Gods...

I found this game amazing not just because of the game play but because you had use joystick! Interacting with this game was more fun just because you used a joystick rather than mouse and keyboard. You needed intense skills and concentration and rapid reflexes. Well I thought that then, if I played it now I'd probably end up ripping my hair out. 

I think this was the first interaction with games for a desktop user back then other than mouse and keys. As the gaming generations developed so did the interactions. Companies wanted to expand and interest more people into wanting to play games, for example hand-held's have changed so much, they have had to change with the times to keep the interest and fun. Starting with a Game Boy there was no colour but to be able to take your game with you where ever you went was a luxury  and now compare them to today's hand-held's. They are full of colour, touch screen and even 3D. It is quite amazing to see how far they have developed in the last 10 years. 

Instead of sitting with a controller wired up to your console, everything now is wireless, making it easier to move around and decreasing the danger of strangling or tripping up your siblings when playing games. 

Look at the Nintendo Wii, it was the first out of the three giants to use the interaction controllers to help play games, it was designed around that. The Wii pushed forward the idea of the player/audience to part of the game. Well it was the first one to actually sell the console because of this. It has opened so many new doors and in a way steered the new generation gaming in a more interactive direction. Since the release of the Nintedo Wii, the other game consoles have been pushed to compete against this and to include it in their consoles to keep their audience. 

The Ps3 brought out the Plastation wand, which interacts with the camera to play games, this widened their games as you could now move about. I find that this is just a copy of the Wii remotes, even though Playstation originally released the eye-toy back in 2003 with the Playstation 2. Maybe everyone forgot about that...

The real interactive prop has to be for me the Kinect for the xbox. This is such amazing technology. It reads your body depending on how near or far away you are and your motions. You will never have to use a controller again! Even better it has voice recognition so you can say a specific game and it will play it for you.