{"id":3332,"date":"2010-11-15T07:07:29","date_gmt":"2010-11-14T21:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=3332"},"modified":"2010-11-15T08:13:28","modified_gmt":"2010-11-14T22:13:28","slug":"video-games-popular-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=3332","title":{"rendered":"Video games &#038; popular culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3334\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blops.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3334\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3334 \" title=\"blops\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blops.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"272\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blops.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blops-300x136.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3334\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Call of Duty: Black Ops:  the biggest entertainment event of 2010<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As someone who plays a lot of video games and has done so since my brother brought home a Commodore 64 over twenty years ago, I&#8217;m completely out of touch with the idea of what makes a popular video game.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t mean popular just amongst other gamers, but popular products like the Wii and <em>Guitar Hero<\/em> that transcend their industry and become pop culture phenomenons that draw in new audiences and lapsed gamers also.\u00a0 During the past week, I&#8217;ve had around four or five different friends and work colleagues who generally don&#8217;t talk about video games suddenly rave about their excitement and anticipation for <em>Call of Duty: Black Ops<\/em>.\u00a0 Two of them have even bought video game consoles specifically to play it.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve also seen its release garner headline press coverage on news sites such as The Guardian and News.com.au.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blackopstweets.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3335\" title=\"blackopstweets\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blackopstweets.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"515\" height=\"289\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blackopstweets.png 515w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/blackopstweets-300x168.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 515px) 100vw, 515px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why is <em>Call of Duty: Black Ops<\/em> (or Cod Blops for short) so popular?\u00a0 I have absolutely no idea.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the seventh instalment in a military shoot &#8217;em up franchise.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not saying its a bad game but I don&#8217;t quite follow whats significant about this particular instalment that has suddenly shot it into the public conscience and made it a likely candidate to become the <em>best selling video game of all time<\/em>.\u00a0 Maybe I just have to play it to understand?\u00a0 I&#8217;m hoping to get my hands on a copy later this month.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3336\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/kinectpic.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3336\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3336\" title=\"kinectpic\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/kinectpic.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/kinectpic.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/kinectpic-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3336\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Microsoft Kinect<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Something that I could have sworn would have become a mainstream product is the Microsoft Kinect, which allows players to control video games using themselves as the body.\u00a0 Kinect is able to detect both physical movements and voice commands (&#8216;Xbox, play DVD&#8217; etc.) and I thought this first step towards a <em>Minority Report<\/em> style user interface was surely going to be a big hit this Christmas.\u00a0 Now I&#8217;m not so sure.\u00a0 What are the odds of two different video game products garnering mainstream attention in consecutive weeks?\u00a0 Perhaps the public will view this as a tired extension of the Nintendo Wii which they&#8217;ve simply grown bored of.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3337\" style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/mikekinect.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3337\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3337\" title=\"mikekinect\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/mikekinect.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/mikekinect.gif 320w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/mikekinect-300x225.gif 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3337\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Microsoft Kinect - flappy arm gaming<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As someone who plays a lot of video games and has done so since my brother brought home a Commodore 64 over twenty years ago, I&#8217;m completely out of touch with the idea of what makes a popular video game.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t mean popular just amongst other gamers, but popular products like the Wii and &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[689,561],"class_list":["post-3332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-gaming","tag-call-of-duty-black-ops","tag-kinect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3332"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3360,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332\/revisions\/3360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}