My son is terribly addicted to gaming. He wants to become a designer though, so, it probably isn’t a big deal.
But I do wish he would study more.
I agree that Halo isn’t as bad as, say, Prototype, which I have also watched my son play. You couldn’t get me to try that one for all the tea in China. But I can still remember watching him first play Pokemon when he was about 7. I walked by and thought, “What a dumb game! Waste of time.”
Now I’m totally addicted to it. I want to get good enough to enter one of the tourneys when the next set get released (if they make another set) but I would be so crushed if I couldn’t place decently! lolz
My guess is, the hubby got our first Nintendo platform when I was pregnant with my son, and I played things like Golf and Super Mario Bros. on it for a few hours on the days when I had nothing else to do. As a result, I think he practically was born with the paddle in his hands! lol His favorite lullaby was Mario’s game theme.
I’ve told him that he should work towards developing AI. There are so many games out there that would be awesomesauce if they could take them to that level. However there are just as many, if not more, that sadly would be horrifying in the “Brainstorm” arena.
(For those who don’t know, that was an old movie with Christopher Walken in it where a kind of virtual reality was created that allowed people to place this special headgear on and it would tap straight into their brainwaves and replay any physical event or deed to the extent of making you feel like it was happening to you. The end of the movie dealt with the developer playing back a ‘tape’ of someone dying and the resulting effects it had on him.)
But yeah, I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. Probably a good thing too. 