electronicalifornia

I brought my Nintendo Wii home for thanksgiving this year. It was my Christmas/birthday gift from my beautiful wife. Still weary of this new console being “just a gimmick”, I decided to test it out on my family. I will report that Nintendo has done something pretty amazing here. At one point my 3 yr old nephew, my 29 (i think) yr old brother and my father were all playing bowling on Wii sports, together. No other video game or game in general that I’ve ever played has been able to span the generation gap like that. It was great fun watching everyone enjoy themselves, cringing when the bowler missed or cheering when my niece bowled a strike then did a swirl and smiled at everyone.

The video game wasn’t the source of the pleasure. Yes, it was fun. But it was much more fun for the whole family to participate in something we could all do. It wasn’t the men watching football and the women talking about child-rearing.

Returning to work today, I read my list of news websites I frequent only to find multiple accounts of the same phenomenon. A family member purchased a Wii, brought it home for thanksgiving and had great family-time playing with their parents and other siblings.

The best part about the Wii is that I don’t find myself “needing” to play for long periods of time. I play a game of bowling or tennis and turn it off. Not only is it more satisfying to actually be using your body to play, it’s also very tiring. Last night while playing Wii tennis against my wife (she won) she commented to me that it made her want to go play tennis. I’m not saying Wii is the savior of video games and is totally non-addictive, but it’s a step in the right direction and makes playing video games what it should be…fun.