Xbox wants to take over your living room!

Xbox's 5 year plan is to take over your living room, and I couldn't be a more excited fan boy!

The Xbox 360 is Microsoft's biggest cash cow right now, and has been for the last few years, so you can guarantee that they will continue to innovate it and bring as much as possible to your living room in the future. Xbox doesn't just want to be the little black box in your living room that you play games on and watch the occasional movie, it wants to be the only black box in your living room. Providing gaming, movie experience, tv station subscriptions, social media, connection to friends and family and more.

If you are thinking of getting a video game system then Xbox is the clear choice. Within the next 5 years it will blow the other 2 systems out of the water by transforming from a video game system to an entire home entertainment system.

The current gen console, 360, is already on its way to take over your living room. Aside from the games, there is more to the Xbox than the average consumer might realize...

For a while now Xbox has had a Facebook and Twitter app. While these apps are good for a quick update they have plenty of room for refinement. I would like to see these 2 apps expanded. As of right now the smartphone apps are a much better quality. None the less, they are there.

With all the streaming video and music apps such as Netflix, Zune and Hulu(+) there are plenty of places to find movies, TV shows, and music videos to watch, all at the push of a button or the swipe of your hand with the Kinect.

With Kinect you can video chat with family and friends around the world. Assuming they have an Xbox LIVE account and a Kinect.

Recently, with the latest dashboard update, Xbox has introduced additional apps and channels. There is the YouTube app, allowing you to sign into your account and catch up on your subscription updates right there, or browse any other video YouTube has to offer. TMZ has its own app, ESPN. The UFC channel had it's first run this past week, with poor results, however it is there and I can promise you the next one will not fail.
That's not to mention all the other companies they are looking into, such as HBOgo, allowing you to watch any HBO show ever right on your Xbox.

The latest news, which inspired me to write this was this article, found Here explains how the next gen Xbox could potentially house a DVR, allowing you to record anything, TV or movies from your cable provider, similar to any PVR proivided by your cable company, even while you play a game, are watching something different, or even if the system is off. However the main thing I am excited about is the ability to record video game content

There has never been a better time to be a gamer, and now there has never been a better time to live with a gamer.

Everything I ever needed to know...

Anyone who knows me well or has gotten into a discussion about the benefits of gaming knows I truly believe that they are more than just a game. A lot of the points below come through subliminally, and might go unnoticed to the average person, but that's where I, and this blog, come in. Read on for what games are really teaching you...

One of the main arguments by non/anti gamers is what good are video games. What can video games teach you? To be honest quite a bit more than they get credit for. In this post I will refer to World of Warcraft a lot as it is a game that I can personally provide the best example from, that's not to say there are not other games that provide similar examples.

Let's start with any dungeon crawler or sandbox game. You have a whole world to explore, its all open ended, no linear level design. You can go anywhere, and that's fun, but what happens when you have to go somewhere specific? What happens when a character gives you a mission to go across the city, or the world even? You open up your map, whether that be digital or physical, and plan your route. Yes, my main map reading skills came from video games.
Who needs to know how to read a map now a days, you ask? Well I still think everyone needs to, but let's move on. What about team work? Of course sports are a great example but we are talking games here. Any MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) and some shooters (Left 4 Dead comes to mind) will teach you teamwork, teaming up with groups of 5 or more to take down a stronger foe takes teamwork. Unless you are a badass warlock...but I won't get into my WoW skills. In any good MMO group you have a tank to spearhead the operation. He takes all the damage, which means you need someone to heal him. The healer also has to heal the whole group, including the select few dealing the damage. If you don't work as a team in that situation failure is an inevitable outcome. That is amplified when you get into the bigger groups of 25. This leads us into the next point:

Communication. When you are in a large group, good communication is key. This usually goes hand in hand with leadership, which we will get into later. To communicate with a team that big and still manage to come out on top is a skill few have. Even I would stay quiet in some of the more heated battles, only calling out if I desperately needed help. This is usually eased by giving certain people co-leader roles in which they communicate to their selected group of players; tanks, healers or damage dealers - allowing a more controlled environment to talk in. Of course when the target goes down all bets are off and it's all open chat and it get loud.

Leadership is a big part of any good team. Without someone leading the pack and controlling the group as a whole things get messy and people die. There are a lot of players who think they can handle this role and it ends terribly for all. By the end of my WoW days I would only run with a few guys I knew could handle it; Bear, Oiys, Verse, I'm talking about you! Being a leader in groups like those took a lot of work, you had to know who you were running with, what they were capable of and if you could trust them to handle the job. Credit to those guys for improving my experiences in the game.

Coaching or mentoring is prevalent in games too. Most of my coaching abilities were learned on the soccer pitch but I was exposed to it in game as well. As I mentioned before, about being a badass warlock, at one point I was asked if I would take on the role of the guilds warlock mentor. With our family friendly guild we had set up team leaders for every class of player. It was the mentor's job to help out the newer players of that specific class. This would include answering any questions someone might have, go on runs with them and teach them how they could improve and suggest alternate ways of doing stuff, in general just teach them to be a better player. This took a vast amount of knowledge of your characters full abilities, even if they were abilities that you never used. As well as a bit of skill as you would have to still fulfill your role in the group, while keeping an eye on your young padawan.

If those team oriented points don't convince you, what about economics? WoW had a fully functioning market that was all user based. If you really wanted to you could spend your whole time in game just on the market, making money. Simple rules of supply and demand, over saturation, under cutting, low buy outs and risk and reward all applied to this. You could buy out an entire product and repost it at a higher market value, controlling the market for that specific product. This, as any market venture, was risky, as there were others either doing the same or waiting to dump all their product and an under cut rate. That would mean you are stuck with your high priced items with no one willing to buy. Another aspect was to learn what would be in demand in the future. Buy everything you could and wait for the price spike, and repostFacebook during prime time!

Resource management is also apparent in most games. Whether it be ammo reserves, currency, space, energy, etc. Any RTS (Real Time Strategy) game will test your ability to gather, maintain and spend resources. Starcraft/Warcraft had you balancing 3 different resources; these were used to purchase troops, buildings and upgrades. Managing them so as to maximize your army strength while still having some for upgrades taught you to calculate and plan on the fly. If you spend all your resource on research and have no troops then you would die. Spend all of it on your troops with no upgrades then you would die. It was a delicate balance that took time to get right.

Time management is also a big part of gaming. Not necessarily in game, but in your real life. Being able to balance school/work, home work, social time, and the massive list of other real world issues we all have and still having time to play takes some work. Again, with WoW, I didn't manage my time well. If I was home, I was playing. Cooking, cleaning, socializing, all took a back seat to gaming. I have quit WoW (2+ years) and gone back to console gaming. Most console gaming allows you to jump in/out without having to make massive time commitment needed for an MMO. This is the one issue most people have with games, knowing when to stop, get off and go outside is sometimes hard for people. At the same time, it's not hard to see why some people would prefer to get lost in the game. When your life is to get up and go to a job that you hate, day in and day out, come home and turn on the news to see 100's of more people have died in terrorism, war, accidents, murder, etc, bills are stacking up and rent is over due... If you could escape all that, even for a few hours a night, into a fantasy realm why wouldn't you? This is, however, the start of a very long rant that I could go on and on about, so we will save that for another day.

My last point in this post is hand/eye coordination. I always love watching a non-gamer pick up a controller and try to play. You will see them twist or move the controller in an attempt to move their character. Watching them fumble with the buttons, contorting their hands in very awkward ways always makes me smile. At the same time if you watch a season gamer play they are relaxed, know exactly where their fingers are and what buttons they need to reach. This is even more spectacular with PC gamers. If you have a gamer in your office just watch their fingers on the keyboard as they work, I'm not talking normal typing either, I mean programs that use hot keys; Auto cad, Illustrator, Sketchup, Photoshop, etc. Watching their fingers bounce all around the keyboard hitting keys with out looking down, twisting their fingers to reach certain combination of keys at an amazing speed even brings a smile to my face.

These are examples of just some of the more hidden things I have learned from gaming. Of course there are games that are designed to teach you things; a lot of Nintendo's handheld games are great for that. If used right, and in the proper context, gaming can be a great asset to the development of a person's brain, personality and well being.

Thanks
Steve, the Lazy Gamer

Online Community

To the average person the online community is a very foreign concept. They generally have no idea what kind of bonds are forged and to what extent the friendships go.

Playing on Xbox LIVE you meet a ton of people, but for the most part the only talking is of the trash variety. There are exceptions, real life friends and long time clan members usually chat with each other, but that is generally in a private party.

I didn't fully understand the online community until I picked up WoW. The PC community seems to form larger and closer bonds than their console counterparts. Even after being off of WoW for well over 2 year now I still chat with some of the people I met in game. Granted, Facebook has helped carry over those relationships and made keeping in touch so much easier.

I was talking with a co-worker/(ex)gamer about why the PC community is so much tighter, we came up with a few possible reasons. It could be because typing chat under a screen name rather than voice chat allows one to be more open and anonymous. Could be the sense of comradery that is formed by joining a clan/guild and playing with similar minded people. Could be the vast amount of time spent with those people every day. Perhaps it is a bit of everything.

The beauty of joining a clan/guild is having a chat room with generally like minded people. On WoW it wasn't long before I floated towards a handful of people who shared my views and they in turn accepted me and my views. I started off slow, throwing in a joke or two. Before long I hopped into the guild chat room and started conversing with them.

The thing people seem to have a hard time understanding about online friends is how you can form a bond with people you have never met. Really it is the same theory behind online dating. You find people of similar views and tastes, you start to talk to them and it moves forward from there. When you spend a few hours every night talking to someone you are bound to talk about more than just the game. Some people might even find it easier to express secrets to someone across the country rather than someone close, it allows them to get out what is bothering them without having it affect their daily life.

I now have contacts across Canada and the U.S. and trust them dearly. If ever a time occurred where I was in their home town I know they would drop almost anything to hang out or help me out. In fact I have already met a few of them face to face. I know plenty of close friends who have also met up with their online friends.

There was one time when I had just started at my office and one of the guys was trying to get some shoes from the States and they wouldn't deliver to Canada. I told him he could get them delivered to a friend and they would send them on up to Canada. He asked how I knew this person, and was instantly against the idea when I told him I knew them from gaming. Yet 3 years later and I'm still closer to that online friend than the guy I work with.

There is a certain sense of accomplishment and comradery that you build when you work together to finish certain goals or quests that seem unachievable. When you spend hours working on a goal with 9 (or 24) other people and emerge victorious and hear the cheers of your fellow teammates the feeling is great. The only way I could describe it to a non gamer would be to imagine the feeling you get when your favorite sports team wins a close game. Now imagine if you were watching that game with 9 of your closets friends. That is the bond and feelings you experience as an online gamer.

To all my WoW peeps, past and present, thank you

My life as a gamer....

I have always been a very imaginative kid, monsters, fantasy, myth, they all excited me and I loved the worlds and adventures you could create with them. So it was only natural for me to sway towards gaming, a genre where you can be the hero of your own adventure. Throughout my life I have stopped zombies from eating my neighbors, placed 1st in races on land, sea and in space while listening to rock and roll, thwarted countless terrorist invasions, slaughtered countless boars and the list goes on. Now if you can pick out those references then you too are a nerd.

While I have owned a great deal of video games systems I never had them all, but that's what friends are for! I would go to my friends to play their NES and Sega, I had the SNES, that they intern came over to play.

The Nintendo 64 is where my love of shooters started. We would have weekend long sessions of Goldeneye 007, and Perfect Dark.

I've had both PlayStation and PS 2, all I remember from them was the Twisted Metal series. The memories of PlayStation are lost due to,

The Xbox. The original beast of a black box, along with Halo changed gaming for me. Massive worlds, amazing characters, lush colors, and the multiplayer. Xbox and Halo's matchmaking paved the way for online gaming in the console world. Being able to hope online and play with anyone in the world in a matter of minutes was amazing.

I have been a console gamer through and through, however I did have a PC stint for a few years. It was the infamous World of Warcraft, I had dabbled in the original RTS and enjoyed the lore so I figured I would give it a try, after years of fighting the temptation. It almost consumed my life, at one point I was the top warlock in my guild, playing for hours every night. Now even though this game has destroyed many lives, as the news loves to point out, I managed to get out while I could, quit cold turkey after years of raiding, looting and fwooshing. There are a number of things I learned and took away from the game, I might get into those in another post, but the thing that has stuck with me is the friendships, this will also be covered in another post.

After so many years of WoW I realised that I had lost touch with my Xbox, I didn't know what new games where coming out, I had missed playing some amazing games, and I just missed it in general.

Since then I have been an Xbox fanboy!

How to protect the ones you love...

Along with the ESRB all 3 systems have some level of parental controls that are accessible through the systems main menus. These can help you manage what content is accessible on the system and allow you to put in some form of password to protect it. I will give a brief explanation on the Nintendo and Playstation controls, along with a link to all 3's web site's parental control pages. I will go into more depth with the Xbox's as that is not only my personal system, but also because I think it is the better of the three for control.

Nintendo allows you to set a limit on the rating content, such as movies, both disc and Netflix, games, what channels they have access to and whether they are allowed to spend points. Click for their How To

Playstation allows you to limit the content, movies, music, games, and online access. However it is my understanding that it is more awkward and less intuitive than the other systems. Click for their How To

Xbox, being that it has the most varied and largest demographic, it is the top selling console going on 2 or 3 years, has the greatest amount of control. Allowing you to set limits not only on content; games, movie, music, but also chat. This includes all types of chat; text, voice and video with the Kinect. Also, if you have multiple accounts on the system you are able to set locks on those. This means you can set up your child's account to limit who they are playing with, talking with and also how much access they have to other players profiles. But at the same time leaving your profile open, all you have to do is lock you profile.

One of the main issues with children is the amount they play. Xbox handles this by allowing you to set play time limits, either daily or weekly limits. It allows you to set a predetermined amount of time, once that time is reached the system will shut down until the next day or week, depending on what you have set. The remaining time is displayed when the center button is pushed. If used properly, and you and your child discuss this system and show them where they can see their remaining time you have a great opportunity to teach them valuable time management skills. If they use all their time for the week in the first 2 days then they have to deal with the consequences.

They other point I mentioned was what they have access to. Xbox's online community has 4 preset "zones". These zones help players find similar types of people to play with. Recreation is all about having fun, Pro is for those who play to win, Family is safe and fun for the everyone, and Underground (my zone) is not for the faint of heart, trash talking and tea bagging can be found here. This is a good start to protect your child. You can also limit who they can play, chat and view profiles of. Whether that be friend only, everyone or blocked.

This is but a fraction of the level of control you can set for your child. Click for their How To

With this and the previous post you can see that the level of protection you can set for your children is a lot higher than most non gamers would think. The gaming industry can only do so much to protect their players, it is up to you, the parents, to use the given tools to your advantage. Be educated about what your child is doing. Next time someone says something about your child's gaming be sure to pass on this information, no child should miss out on this world wide form of entertainment because of ignorant parents.

Thanks,

Steve, the Lazy Gamer