We’ve Come a Long Way since Pong: Today’s Video Games

Gone were the days when Video Games referred to a big unit along with head set connected to a television and usually found in a video gaming arcade, where gaming enthusiasts spend time racing the car at a devastating speed with head set fitted on to the ears.  Now the trend has changed and many homes have purchased the latest state-of-the-art LCD panels along with surround sound at home, though video gaming arcades still exist at some places.

Video games have grown in such a proportion that extra care and vigilance is required on the part of the parents of young children to ensure that their children are not carried away by the ill-effects such gaming introduces. War games are also on the rise and may sow some sort of vengeance in the minds of young children.

Today, it's all about the "consoles" - meaning the new Nintendo Wii, the Sony PlayStation 3 and the XBox 360 from Microsoft. They are all fairly small, have powerful CPUs, advanced graphics subsystems and the full range of CD and DVD compatibilities for music, audio, video and compressed multimedia files. Hackers have even found a way to install computer operating systems on some of these devices, and use them variously as gaming machines, word processors and even Web browsers.

Computer gaming has matured, too, although entry-level computers are not up to the challenge. Gamers either "super-size" their own computers or buy from specialist PC builders, because the software makes tremendous demands on the CPU, the graphics processor and the display. Video game manufacturers have the market covered, though, as their titles are usually released to all the major platforms and computing environments.

One trend in video games that disturbs for parents of teenagers is the rise of crime-centered story lines, where the bad guys are, well, the good guys. Titles like "Grand Theft Auto" have caused tremendous controversy, as they show shootings, sexual assaults and 100-mph car chases with no legal, social or moral context to the tale. However, adults can decide for themselves what is appropriate and choose from thousands upon thousands of game titles - and decide for their minor children, too. When parents are interested and involved in their children's lives, video games present no special problem.

One special problem that these multiplayer games, and social networking sites, do present is related to security. At the social sites, and in some of the "networked" games, participants view each other with webcams and can hear each other, too, as long as players have microphones connected to their PCs. All of Apple's laptops and iMacs, as well as most PC laptops, come with webcams and microphones installed.

The only way to protect against this sort of intrusion is to follow certain simple and specific security steps of your own. If you have an always-on computer with a webcam, disable the camera until those times that you actually want to use it. Turn off the microphone, too. In fact, it may be easier simply to question why it is your computer always has to be on. The fact is, it is better for your computer and its components if you do turn it off, at least if it is not being used for a couple of hours or more.