Posts Tagged ‘Culture’
Live Action Fallout
Talk all you want about riveting, complex storylines and deep strategic experiences when many of us play video games we’re channeling our inner child. Not the curious, sensitive inner child looking on a new world with joy, but the one who ran around for hours with a stick playing space marine or constructed huge forts from legos.
It seems that simply exploring a digital recreation of post-apocalyptic America wasn’t enough for some Fallout fans though, because last month at an abandoned air defense base outside of Leningrad over three hundred Russian Fallout fans got together for a live action roleplaying game based on Fallout 2. The amount of effort some of them put into creating their own costumes and equipment is impressive, especially those who are decked out in full power armor.
While of course it would have been far more appropriate to locate the event much closer to Chernobyl, I’m guessing that for those involved their desire for accuracy and realism stopped just short of high levels of radiation exposure, though the guy dressed as a ghoul might have been okay with it.
Female Gamers Grew In Last Year
No, we’re not saying you’ve gained weight. Really. We just mean there’s more of you. No, not like that. Really you look great we promise. All we’re saying is that the sheer number of female gamers has increased over the last twelve months. It’s not really us saying it either, this information comes from an NPD survey. The percentage of female console players went up from twenty-three to twenty-eight percent, mainly due to the Wii whose use increased by nineteen percent.
The handheld market rose as well with the “heavy usage” category rising by four percent amongst females, which can likely be blamed on the Nintendo DS. The ‘extreme gamers’ (those who play 39 hours or more per week) rise by a whopping four percent. Before all the ‘hardcore’ gamers out there start chiming in about how the Wii and DS are toys, let me remind you how much easier life would be for a gamer if you had a girlfriend/wife who understood your hobby and maybe even encouraged it?