In a famous scene in the first Matrix movie, a character takes a bite out of a juicy steak. He knows it's not real, but enjoys it anyway. In some ways, a video game -- just moving pixels on the screen -- is a similar virtual reality experience. No, the aliens in Halo 3 are not real, but we pretend they are. That is how a game can pull you from a living-room couch into a foreign realm.
For some, though, video games are too compelling -- too addictive. The warning signs are obvious: compulsive playing, scorning friends and family in the real world, an inability to think about other subjects. Ten million people have signed up to play the PC role-playing game World of Warcraft. In Halo 3, the wildly popular first-person shooter for Xbox 360, almost 7 billion people have been killed online since its debut, and 11 million die each day, according to ITwire.com.
It's important in life to maintain a broad palette when it comes to culture and the arts. Hideo Kojima agrees, as he continues to use video games like Death Stranding to introduce people to music and other elements they might not otherwise discover.
Mojang has partnered with Merlin Entertainments to build the world's first Minecraft theme park in the UK.
A three-episode live-action adaptation of the first two Yakuza video games will debut Tuesday, March 17 exclusively IGN. Each episode is about an hour long and will stream on IGN.com and IGN’s YouTube channel.
