Category — Videogames

A decidedly adigital game of battling tops has “erupted into American living rooms,” reports Jesse McKinley in the New York Times (3/22/12). You may remember Beyblade from the early 2000s. It originated in Japan and, back then, the game was mostly made of plastic. It went out of style, but was re-introduced in Japan in 2008, this time featuring “a variety of changeable parts — energy rings and spin tracks and fusion wheels — and more metal, which added heft and created a satisfying clanging noise when they collide.” The new and improved Beyblade entered the US market in 2010, “coinciding with a new anime series on the Cartoon Network” and has since taken off like, well, a top from a string.

According to Hasbro, its American distributor, Beyblade has sold “more than 120 million tops worldwide.” NPD group puns that Beyblade was “the top-selling ‘battling’ toy in the nation last year.” The essential appeal is in the nature of the game itself. Following a ritual battle cry of “3,2,1, let it rip!” players send the tops flying off of rip-cords and into battle in “Bey Stadium.” The objective is to outlast other player’s top, and since “skirmishes usually last less than a minute, there is always time for another. And another. And another.” As six-year-old Eamon Moogan explains: “I like it because it’s really fast … And because even if you lose, you can always do it again.” Or as six-year-old John Luk Payne says, “It’s real life … it’s not just looking at something.”

Some kids are seeking out and swapping “rare imported” tops and creating their own “hybrid super-tops” from parts. International Beyblade competitions have also sprung up, including the “first-ever Beyblade World Championship” in Toronto. “Beyblade is a heck of a way to unite kids from all over,” says Zakiah Garcia, a sixth-grader who represented the US at the competition. The Beyblade phenomenon has understandably left some parents a bit frazzled, but Susanna Yurick, who was initially apprehensive about the game, says she likes that Beyblade teaches her son something about physics. So far, it is mostly boys on the Beyblade bandwagon, but first-grader Maleah Frances is ready to join the bey-fray: “The boys are a little bit better,” she says, “But I’m practicing.”

Having gone out of style in the 1980s, Table Hockey is attracting a new generation of fans, reports Will Connors in the Wall Street Journal (4/23/12). Table Hockey is where players use metal rods to move flat cutouts of players along slots in the table, manipulating them as levers in hopes of landing pucks in the opponent’s net. It was really popular in the 1970s but lost its mojo with the arrival of “videogames and the internet.” The game had survived, to some degree, among middle-aged men, who are now actively recruiting younger players to their ranks. Their pitch is “the sport’s human touch over videogames and smartphone apps.”

Mark Sokolski, 35, says young players are attracted to Table Hockey’s “real-life camaraderie” compared with the digital alternatives. “In videogames, there is no humanity,” he says. However, he showed no mercy when taking on 14-year-old Carter Campbell at the Canadian Table Hockey Championships earlier this year. “I’m gonna stomp this kid,” Mark said. And he did, 5-3 and 5-1. But, in fact, Mark, a middle-school teacher, had introduced Carter to the game in the classroom. Carter was a natural and soon “was beating all the kids his age, and most adults in town, too, at school and in local tournaments.”

Carter sees Table Hockey as a great equalizer. “I’m clearly not that athletic,” he says. “This is a a sport that I can play and I’m actually good at.” The Canadian event, held annually since 1999, drew a record number of participants — 120. Another tourney, the North American Championships meanwhile “drew players from as far away as Denmark and Norway,” and also broke the record for participation, with 48 players. Girls and women are still a rarity at Table Hockey tournaments, but Sue Elias, who says she’s “over 40″ is unintimidated. “One guy started to bleed during our game, he was trying to beat me so badly,” says Sue, observing . “But,” she adds, “I won.”

Videogames change the brain for the better, and violent videogames have "the strongest beneficial effect of all," reports Robert Lee Holtz in the Wall Street Journal (3/6/12). Various university research studies have found a number of benefits from playing videogames, "from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability." A Michigan State University study found that nearly "any computer game appears to boost a child’s creativity." It seems that the "powerful combination of concentration and rewarding surges of neurotransmitters like dopamine strengthen neural circuits in much the same way that exercise builds muscles."

This occurs to some degree with other kinds of activities, such as "learning to read, playing the piano, or navigating the streets of London." But it is particularly apparent with videogames, and most powerful if the game involves violence. Players of such games "made decisions 25% faster than others without sacrificing accuracy, according to a study. Indeed, the most adept gamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second — four times faster than most people, other researchers found. Moreover, practiced game players can pay attention to more than six things at once without getting confused, compared with the four that someone can normally keep in mind."

Dr. Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester says that it is the intensity of the interaction that makes the difference. "It happens that all the games that have the good learning effect happen to be violent," she says. "We don’t know whether the violence is important or not … We hope not." There is a downside, of course: "Brain scans show that violent videogames can alter brain function in healthy young men after just a week of play, depressing activity among regions associated with emotional control, researchers at Indiana University recently reported. Other studies have found an association between compulsive gaming and being overweight, introverted and prone to depression."

Telephones, email and texting have given way to games as a communications mode for some people, reports Seth Schiesel in the New York Times (1/5/12). This would include people like Seth’s friend, Natasha, who is so absorbed in a game called Words With Friends, that the best way reach her is to use the game’s chat window. Another friend, Shawna, "maintains some of her closest relationships" via YoVille, a game in which players "decorate a house, an apartment, a plantation, a town or nearly any other virtual environment." It’s at a point where Shawna’s mother conveys important family news on YoVille.

"This is not so unusual," writes Seth. "Almost every adult in the industrialized world (and many in developing economies) now uses some sort of electronic device daily and all of those devices offer some sort of game. As games become ubiquitous, they are not only content but also context for mundane human relationships among people who don’t even consider themselves gamers." Shawna says the YoVille conversations with her mother concern everything from how neatly (or not) Shawna keeps her virtual apartment to news that her brother is getting married.

There’s also something about a game that’s more bonding than other kinds of communication. "When we play a game with or against someone," writes Seth, "we get something out of it that we don’t find on a message board or in a bare chat room, email, text or even a phone call: a sense that we are doing something together." Indeed this emotional element is critically important to a third friend of Seth’s, who found solace playing World of Warcraft after her fiance died just a month before they were supposed to be married. "When we type back and forth in the game it is mostly about how to defeat the next monster," says Seth, who suggests that this provides his friend with refuge from her grief in a way that a phone conversation never could.

All-Star Baseball, an out-of-print board game that’s 70 years old, "remains popular among a cluster of enthusiasts," reports Mike Sielski in the Wall Street Journal (7/18/11). “Our wives call this the ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ of baseball,” says Joe Hagen, 33, who gets together with his friends to play the game. “We’ve taken it to a whole new level of nerdiness.” He’s not kidding. Joe “and his buddies have designed uniforms for their teams and a website to track standings and statistics, have built a cardboard ballpark modeled after Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium, and perform play-by-play ‘broadcasts’ of their contests as if they were Vin Scully wannabes.”

Other games, like Strat-O-Matic, "have had more staying power with the public, but All-Star Baseball’s primitive authenticity remains a cult classic because it is "a realistic, stat-based facsimile of actual baseball." Its creator was a former major-league player himself — Ethan Allen spent three seasons with the New York Giants. Ethan used "career batting data" to create "performance discs that represented actual players’ offensive tendencies; numerically coded and multi-colored, the discs resembled pie charts." It is set up so that Babe Ruth has a larger "home run" category than, say, Ty Cobb, who was more likely to hit a single.

Players slide the “disc into a spinner,” flick a metal arrow, and “opponents let chance and probability determine the outcome of ‘at bats.’ Another spinner determined how a team ‘fielded’ a ball in play.” The only thing the original game didn’t factor in was the pitcher, although some players have devised a way to add this to the mix. Others are content to use modern stats to create their own discs for today’s players. And while there’s an online group of 650 members that’s devoted to the game, nobody would dream of digitizing it. “It’s the utter, raw, indisputable power that comes from looking at Hank Aaron’s disc and knowing that every home run he will ever hit again is in the palm of my hand,” says Phil Haberkorn, who says that changing anything about that would “miss the whole point of the game’s fascination.”

Pinball, says David Silverman, is "not just a game to play, it’s a historical evolution about what our country is all about," reports Natalie DiBlasio in USA Today (8/22/11). David is executive director of the National Pinball Museum, which has seen some 5,000 visitors since it opened in Georgetown last December. Pinball, says David, is "an American icon, and it’s the art of the United States." David, who is 63, says he’s been playing pinball since he was four, and collecting pinball machines for 35 years. He is not alone in his enthusiasm, and according to John Sharpe, pinball’s popularity is growing.

John is a founder of the International Flipper Pinball Association, formed "to establish a worldwide player-ranking system, endorse tournaments and elevate awareness. The association lists 38 leagues, mostly in the United States, but also in Canada, Germany, Spain and Japan." It currently ranks some 10,000 competitors and in May hosted the World Pinball Championship in Sweden to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the pinball machine. "The growth we have seen is insane," says John, whose sons, Joshua and Zach, serve as the association’s president, and vice-president, respectively. "Pinball was a staple of growing up," says Zach. "There is nothing else like it." Videogames be damned.

Bernie Kelm, president of the Free State Pinball Association, which also sponsors tournaments, says that the home market is driving pinball growth. "The really passionate pinball players become collectors," he says. Zach Sharpe says he owns four pinball machines, and his brother, Joshua has 17. Players "range in age from 20s to 50s … and most are close to 40, young enough to have grown up with early video games." Joshua Henderson, at 14, is the world’s youngest ranked player. His father, Mark, says the appeal is not mysterious. "Pinball is part of Americana; US made and developed and the mother and father of today’s gaming industry." Or, as Stuart Wright, 46, puts it: "We all come together for the love of the silver ball."

Hundreds of thousands of consumers have participated in an alternate-reality game unaware that it was a promotion for Wrigley 5 chewing gum, reports Julie Jargon in the Wall Street Journal (8/23/11). The game, called "The Human Preservation Project" was introduced via Facebook ads seeking "test subjects" to participate "in virtual experiments to save the human race by maintaining sensory experiences." This was followed by the distribution of "confidential" materials "at the E3 Expo, a trade show for computer and video games." Then came a stunt at the Bonnaroo festival where parachutists scattered "thousands of paper helicopters with glowing LED lights" as a clue for the game.

A scavenger hunt in 15 cities provided further clues — without any clue that Wrigley was behind it. How could anyone have guessed? Videogame and movie promoters often employ this type of teaser campaign, but it’s "unusual for a consumer-products company. It is also unusual to tease something that has already been on the market for a while." Wrigley’s 5 launched five years ago. But Martin Schlatter, Wrigley’s chief marketing officer, says it makes perfect sense. "This is the true nature of the brand, which is exploratory," he says. "You go down the rabbit hole, and you don’t know how deep it is or where it goes." For Wrigley, it went deep and wide: "Wrigley says that 5 is its most successful launch ever and that it has achieved $500 million in sales in five years."

From the start, 5 has bucked convention. It comes dressed in "slim black gum packs" and offers flavors such as "Cobalt" and "Rain." Rather than "touting the gum as serving a function like freshening breath or whitening teeth, the company sought to position it as a provider of sensory stimulation. Some flavors provide a warming sensation, it said, while others offer cooling." Some players, such as Aaron Aller, admit to disappointment after discovering Wrigley’s fingerprints; the brand is now printing game codes on gum packs and the only way to get more clues is to buy more gum. But Aaron, who has been playing from the start, says he’s gotten over it and has purchased 15 packs of gum to keep playing. "It’s still entertaining," he says. Wrigley says some 600,000 people have participated in the game.

"Last year, US revenues for videogames amounted to $20 billion, twice as much as for Hollywood blockbusters," reports Robert Ferrigno in a Wall Street Journal review of "Fun Inc.," by Tom Chatfield (10/25/10). Worldwide, the total figure is $110 billion. World of Warcraft alone "had revenues of $1 billion," and some 12 million subscribers, paying "$10 a month to inhabit a virtual world where they can choose to be any character they want, from mage to warrior to goblin." The budget to create a videogame on that scale is now somewhere between $10 and $50 million.

It is indeed a long way from 1972, and "the dramatic success of Pong, a game in which the object was simply to hit a "puck from one side of the screen to the other." And yet, "US game-related sales … declined over the past year," according to Gamasutra. Ironically, the decline is coming at the hands of "low-cost games designed for smartphones or given away on the internet," which are "threatening profits and market share." Farmville, for instance, a "free online game … has 62 million active users." And Pac-Man is making a comeback with a "30th anniversary edition."

One of the more fascinating growth industries within the industry is the advent of "gold farmers," mostly in China. One of the goals in games like World of Warcraft is to accumulate virtual currency that can be used to "buy things within the game — armor, horses, food, magic spells." Since players don’t always have time to earn this currency themselves, they will buy it through brokers, using real American dollars (100 gold coins go for about $20). Another somewhat surprising quirk is that even though videogames are often criticized for violence, "for the past five years the most popular segment of the videogame market has been games rated E (for Everyone), comparable to a G-rating for films."

Women express "themselves in a dizzying array of mediums: tinsel paintings, marbledust drawings, hair-work wreaths, paper cuts, quilts and embroidered samplers," reports Karen Rosenblum in the New York Times (4/16/10). Such works of women, spanning the 18th through 20th centuries, are on display at the American Folk Art Museum. The exhibit is called "Women Only: Folk Art By Female Hands" and it shows the contributions made to art by women, who haven’t had opportunities to paint or sculpt like men have.

Quilts were a favorite medium, of course, among them the Cleveland-Hendricks Crazy Quilt, which worked political ribbons and other paraphernalia into a raucous but still socially acceptable textile. And the Crazy Trousseau Robe, of quilted silk and lace with metallic embroidery, hints at the unconventional life of its maker — a thrice-married Western frontierswoman who was one of the earliest female railroad telegraphers." A piece by Maria Cadman Hubbard, Pieties Quilt, "included snippets of religious texts and homilies like ‘kind words never die’ and ‘forgive as you hope to be forgiven’."

But while the show’s focus is on women, the work itself "has social-documentary interest that is largely gender blind. The show’s many mourning drawings, for instance, depict men and women weeping at the tombstones of their young offspring." The death of George Washington in 1799 also created an "explosion of mourning art." In the 19th century, "art-making was mandatory, a part of education," which for women was driven by the concept of ‘Republican Motherhood,’ or the belief that women ought to be educated so that they could raise moral sons." The show runs through September 12th.

He says he’s had people question whether he’s a real person, but skateboarder Tony Hawk denies that he’s just a videogame character in a New York Times profile by Patricia R. Olsen (2/7/10). He also says there’s "a lot of pressure associated with the title of professional skateboarder. No matter where I go," says Tony, "people expect amazing feats. If I go to a public skate park, kids will sit down and expect me to entertain them." But he says he has no regrets, even though his career path did not include going to college.

"I experienced so many things that I otherwise wouldn’t have, and I was exposed to so much culture," he explains, adding: "I’m not saying everyone should skip college, but I learned so much that I feel I’m educated. When my high school classmates were trying to figure out what they were going to study, I already had a career and a house." He says he was drawn to skateboarding because he didn’t "have to listen to a coach or rely on a team." Unlike baseball or basketball, he says he got better every time he skated.

Today, he has a company, Tony Hawk, Inc., with "five divisions: merchandising, endorsements, events, film and digital media." And he takes issue with "the attitude that skating professionally is a bad influence on kids or not a viable career option. I do my best to prove the naysayers wrong," he says, adding: "Several years ago I started a foundation to build free skate parks in low income areas. Kids use them from sunup to sundown. Our endorsements can help cut through the red tape in communities. So far we’ve had a hand in creating 450 parks."