Noah Balmer

It was interesting to learn that the creator of pong failed at first because he created a game with 'complex' controls. Now most games have so many controls people who arn't 'gamers' are too afraid of the learning curve to try. I remember the first time i played a videogame. It was the Nintendo. I played Super Mario Brothers. My parents didn't allow me to have a console game system at that age so I was trying to move the character on the screen and I was waving the controller around. My friend laughed at me. Its funny now that Nintendo is starting to use motion as a controlling method.
Recently, my roommate made me play Rez. The abstraction in the game is not at all annoying like it would be if it was a first person shooter. When your trying to get that human hair to flow just right its hard to make it look real. If you just don't try, then you can focus on gameplay. This is what Nintendo is doing with the Wii. They don't want to get into the graphics arms race like the Sony and Microsoft.
flOw, the game I want to do my midterm on is also very abstract. One of the things I want to look at is what different people name the powerups in the game. My roommate calls some of the powerups you eat 'carbs' and others 'protein' based on how you get larger from eating them. I hope to videotape people playing it as well. Flow is a very classic feeling game in its control because you only use one button. It also is very beautiful tho. Escpecially in 1080p HD! Ive noticed my friends saying 'dude, check out how pretty my tail is' and in other games they would be more likely to say, 'Suck on that fucker!' That's a pretty big difference.
While was reading it kind of steped its way through my childhood with those games. It reminded me of a project I did for a Microsoft design competition. I designed a game system that began with simple 'classic' games and evolved into a fully functional laptop/ entertainment PC. I believe that children shouldn't be thrown into a 'virtual world' style environment the first time they play a video game. People of my generation evolved with the technology from simple text based and board game feeling games. What do you think?