Video Games With An Agenda Shop

I make my living gaming. Can you imagine - doing what you enjoy doing most - and getting paid for it? Sounds like a wild fantasy, right? Think again. Many gamers get paid very well just to spend time with their consoles playing the latest games, because they are video game testers. Here’s how you can become one in 3 easy steps.

Step One: Make Contacts

You can’t just browse the jobs section of the classifieds to find companies looking to hire game testers for the latest games. You actually have to go straight to the companies that develop games and let them know who you are, what your gaming skills are and why you would be a great video game tester.

Make sure to present yourself in a professional manner. At the same time, don’t be afraid to brag about how many games and consoles you own and how many hours a day you spend gaming. Experience counts!

Step Two: Take Your Job Seriously

As long as you actually own the console or PC you’d like to test games on, chances are you’ll eventually get your first assignment. Make sure to read the instructions carefully. Especially make certain you know exactly what kind of information and feedback the company is looking for from you. Keep this in mind as you play the game they provide you with.

Keep notes as you go along and write clearly. Don’t forget to check your spelling and grammar. Most importantly, make sure you get the data back to the company on time! Even though you’re having fun, don’t forget to stay on track.

Step Three: Be Proactive In Taking On New Projects

After completing your first assignment, you may be so excited when you receive that first paycheck that you spend all your time gloating about it. Don’t! Keep up the process of contacting companies and providing quality reviews and feedback. You will build up an impressive resume of game testing assignments that will help you get even more and better paying ones in the future.

Sounds like a great job, right? So, if you want to be able to tell you friends “I game for a living”, follow the steps above and you’ll soon be on your way to making a full time income from the comfort of your console.

Whether you like it or not, you can learn much from historically based video games such as Civilization IV or Medieval Total War. These games are great for getting a general education in historical events, cultures, and building types and ancient warriors. If you are looking to buy a suit of armor, then you may want to read this article to learn about how these games can help you do some preliminary research on your suit of armor.

Medieval II: Total War (which we will call MTWII for the rest of the article) is a great place to look at some historical armor. It is the latest game from the Creative Assembly so the graphics are top notch and you are able to see with pretty good detail what soldiers wore back in the medieval ages. For example, playing as the French faction in the game, you’ll eventually get a whole host of knights are your disposal. Knights are the primary example where most of the suits of armors in castles and in today’s homes are found. Why? Because they were often the most heavily armored to serve as shock troops and to bust through hard lined defenses. Once you get so far in the game, you can see about 5 different types of armor that the knights wore. They include a Gothic style armor and a Milanese type of armor. They also have the standard crusader and sugar loaf type of armor.

The surprising thing is that if you look around shopping for these, you’ll see similar designs in today’s retail stores.You can also get a good look at suits of armor by playing role-playing games. Why? These are from a third person perspective and you’ll be able to see with great detail the armor that soldiers wore. Just pause the game and take a look at a suit of armor a character is wearing. You’ll casually learn what designs seem to be popular in the medieval ages.

If you’ve dreamed about working full-time for one of the big names in the video game industry such as Nintendo or Sony, you probably have already done your research and discovered the requirements you’ll need to meet to get hired. Assuming you’ve already finished the necessary courses and built up some references from freelance work, you may now be ready for a full time job with one of the large players. Be warned though, it’s not all sunshine and roses. Here are some things to be prepared for with a full-time video game industry position.

1. Game Ideas Are A Dime A Dozen

Whatever you do, don’t expect to get any respect for your “game ideas”. Large video game design houses already have all the ideas they need for new titles. The only thing they really need is people who can bring those ideas to life. That’s why programmers and those who can design computer graphics and animations are in such high demand.

On the other hand, if you can come up with ways for your company to bring a game from idea to market faster, cheaper or more profitably, you’ll find that your employers will be all ears. After all, even the the video game industry, profit is still the bottom line.

2. Game Design And Development Takes Time

If you’re the kind of person who likes to see quick results once a project starts, you’re going to be in for another surprise. Game development is a slow and tedious process with most games taking anywhere from 6 months to several years before they are ready to be released.

To make things even less rewarding, most companies will have several games in development at the same time. That’s because they know that most of the games they produce won’t be top-sellers and they want to lessen their risk. You have to be ready to handle months or more trying to make your title the best even while knowing your company has likely spread its bets around.

3. You Need To Be A Team Player

Even if the game you worked on turns out to be a hit, you’re probably not going to get all the recognition you feel you deserve. That’s because most projects in the game industry will require you to work as part of a large team. Different members of the team will be responsible for different aspects of game development.

In fact, you may not even see those working on other parts of the game during development, as there maybe another person or group of people responsible for pulling all of the pieces together. If you’re not a person who can appreciate the inner-satisfaction of a job well done along with your paycheck, this can be a real downside to working full time for a big name in this industry.

When this debate comes up I notice hard headed advocates on both sides. I usually find that very little critical reason or thought goes along with their opinions. So I decided to examine my own opinion further, and try to come about the complexities of the topic. It certainly is a debate that is ever-changing, just as the graphics in the video game industry increases. The violence for the most part remains steady. Games from years in the past featured brutally killing each other and such, but now it looks more real. Is concern over this correlation valid?

Firstly, the advocates that say it is no problem at all cite that as adults, they see a clear separation of video games and real life. While they may chainsaw someone in Gears of War they assure us those same impulses are silenced when they are chopping wood at their construction site. An interesting topic to examine is why we enjoy killing someone in a game. Why we enjoy running away from cops in Grand Theft Auto IV, or even killing them. Perhaps we will not like the results of such a study, but such an examination is crucial. Maybe it excites some inner desire in us, some exotic foreign evil desire that is chained and netted by society. Perhaps it is helpful that these restricted desires find some harmless release. Nevertheless, the advocates of video game violence cite that they can tell the difference. This is an obvious fact, for the vast majority of the people that play violent video games live everyday family oriented lives. The social conservatives lashing out for restrictions would not even be able to recognize those they are against.

However, I see the debate growing in complexity when the distinction the advocates for video game violence cite diminishes. I mean this by the increase in the graphical capacity we have seen in video games as of late. Certainly, the realism is not there yet as we clearly see characters that are not up to par with even 1995 CGI standards. However, let’s take a step in the future for a second. What if, just as CGI has grown, video game graphics grow to the point where we can’t see the difference between it and real life? How does the distinction between the game and real life change then? Would an advocate of video game violence be fine blasting off the head of an all too real innocent civilian? The complexity grows. You may cite the violence in movies (real looking gore) that already exist today and perhaps do not show a problem. The difference is we are observers of that violence and receive correlating emotions; it does not excite the same drives as doing the violence.

I think it’s obvious as the graphics continue to increase in video games the complexity of the debate will grow as the distinction between video games and real life will diminish. As an avid video gamer, I of course enjoy games such as Gears of War and the soon Gears of War 2. I just hope that my fellow gamers will relinquish their hard headed opinions and think about the complexities of the debate.

Video game demographics involve the study of video gaming habits of people of various ages. It requires a variety of primary and secondary research techniques such as telephone and personal interviews, analysis of market surveys, trade journals, and company literature.

The demographics of video game players and the related studies reveal that video gaming is mainly an adult-oriented form of entertainment! Video games are played extensively by both men and women too. Almost 60% of the Americans play video games.

Demographic is the common name for population studies. Video game demographics involve the analysis of different demographic variables such as how many people are playing video games, age of the average gamer, gender of the gamers, what they play and how video gaming affects television viewing. Recent studies show that people have accepted video games as an important entertainment medium.

According to video game demographics, 39% of people who play computer and video games are women. Forty percent of online gamers are also women. Thirty five percent of game players are usually under eighteen years, and 65% of game players are over eighteen years old. The average age of a video game player is 18 years old. Video games are widely used by 18 to 34 year old people. People in this age range spend more time in playing video games than watching the television.

Video game industries make the most of video game demographics. They identify the characteristics of their customers using this. The information provided by video game demographics can be used to enhance the quality of their service.

Although video games did not come directly from Japan, they differ from other forms of Japanese media as they have been able to penetrate the U.S. market better than any other popular media coming out of Japan. For example, while manga and anime have become a part of some stores, they have their own section, while video games coming from the Land of the Rising Sun are able to sit next to all the video games made in the United States or other places around the world. Unlike anime and manga, Japanese video games aren’t labeled under “Japanese”. In fact, most consumers aren’t even aware where their games are coming from. While Japanese movies and music rarely come to U.S. shores, Japanese video games are a crucial part of that very large industry.

It wasn’t always like this, however. The first video game consoles were all American, featuring companies like Atari and Coleco. There were Japanese video games, but they were primarily in arcades and never came over unless an American company brought them to the U.S. The game market crashed in 1983 and it looked like home consoles were going to be a thing of the past.

In Japan, however, the Japanese company Nintendo released their system, the Famicom (also known as the NES in America). The system and its games both sold quite well and it quickly came over to America. The system revived the home console market in America basically by itself.

All the games coming out then were created by Japanese companies since they had already been out in Japan for a year. American developers also used the system for their games since it was the only one out at the time. Everybody was making money, as developers’ games sold and Nintendo was the one licensing them all. Other companies around the world found trouble in joining the American market as Nintendo was dominant.

Many American consumers didn’t even question the fact that they were buying games from a company called “Nintendo”. Americans bought other electronic devices such as cameras and televisions that came from Japan, so it didn’t seem that much of a transition to be buying electronic video games from the same country. They were simply buying Japanese video games to play on their Japanese system. In fact, no non-Japanese system has had any success in America except for the X-Box.

Since the early days of gaming, American games have started to slowly gain more and more shelf space though. Now the percentage is about 50-50, though that could possibly be because the Japanese game market has been in its own little decline while the American game market has been on the rise. Still, many of the big game series people have grown to love are from the days of Japan’s dominance in the American video game market. It will always hold a special place in the hearts of many gamers, even if its market share continues to be on the decline.

Video games are a ten billion dollar industry and growing all the time. Since this industry has grown so much and many believe it will continue to grow, there is no doubt that researchers have started to analyze the effects of playing these games. There are many positive effects including faster hand-eye coordination, strategic thinking, cooperative participation and careful analyzing of in-game risk. These are great positive effects and researchers are indicating that video games can be an easy and healthy way to relieve stress too.

Research has pointed out that playing a casual game for 30 minutes is a great way to relieve stress. A casual game is something that is easy to learn but difficult to master. It could be as simple as minesweeper or hearts. These games are easy to pick up and learn the few rules that exist. You can play for a while, save your game and then return whenever you need to ‘get away’ and forget about reality for a few more minutes. You can pick right up where you left off and continue your game without losing anything. These two games, along with a few others, come with windows and should be easy to find in your program menu. Furthermore, these games work in window mode meaning you can easily have it open with other programs like word and excel. You can switch back and forth effortlessly and quickly if the boss is coming!

Playing for 15 to 30 minutes a day will help concentrate your mind on something less important so you can forget about that stressful day. It is beneficial to ‘leave’ reality and dumb out for a short amount of time. Prolonged exposure to video games, even the mundane ones, could lead to repetitive stress injures or addiction in a few cases.

Casual games are not the only way to relieve stress but also video games in general. Casual games are perhaps the easiest to learn but if you enjoy challenges and have the extra time, pick up a more difficult game. The learning curve may be steeper but the positive effects will remain. A few years ago, there were articles written about the marines playing Halo in their off time. This may sound strange that marines in combat were playing combat focused games in their down time for enjoyment. However strange this may sound for you and me, the effects were enormous for them. It created cooperation and team building as they had structured competitive play along with playing against others online. Along with these great positive outcomes, the most prominent was the distraction and stress reliever that playing games like Halo created. It is important for marines to stay focused and certainly playing Halo is not part of boot camp but the distraction it created allowed them to be more productive in the ‘real’ battlefield.

Next time you are stressed out and want to get away, play a video game that you are familiar with and enjoy. This is a much easier and inexpensive than planning a vacation or even resorting to alcohol to relieve stress.