Game Chemistry

Video games by mail is becoming big business as yet another company emerges to try and take on that market in the United States. New easing of regulations at the nations Postal Service are helping to stimulate more mail order business and the video games by mail model has worked out very well for Gamefly which as come out in a big way to deliver games by postal mail to video game fans across the US. With the DVD by mail business that Blockbuster Inc. already enjoys, it has been able to sidle up next to Netflix, Inc. as a major competitor, but by leveraging the power of its brick and mortar business, Blockbuster may be able to muscle in on Gamefly, industry insiders have told the press. The mail subscription platform will be called Total Access and since the $20 billion a year video game market is so competitive, Blockbuster will need to clearly define its offering for consumers, experts say. Blockbuster, which is based in Dallas, Texas, has formed a partnership with Comcast Corp. a major US provider of cable TV services and plans to offer its Total Access game packages at a $3 discount for Comcast customers.

Comcast believes that by partnering with Blockbuster they will be able to offer more entertainment choices that will appeal to families with children in the US and that they will be able to build their business by teaming up to be part of the $8.99 per month DVD service. If successful, this will give fans more choices when they consider renting video games.

It has been quite some time since the world heard from Atari, Inc. and it appears that the video game company, which has recently set itself up in new corporate offices in the West Los Angeles area of California, is intent on making a come back to regain its glory days back when it dominated the home video game console market. The Atari brand is well known all across the globe these days, but the company is having to start over after decades of pure chaos, say experts, as well as a number of big financial losses that have really devastated its business. The majority of gamers will remember that Atari helped to create the early video game industry in the 1970′s by way of titles like Asteroids, Pong and other massively popular titles that were a first for those who loved arcade games and wanted to be able to play them in their own home. Then, the game market crashed midway into the next decade and since then it has been a rough ride for Atari as it went through one big corporate issue after another and has been sold to a variety of larger companies such as Hasbro and Warner Communications. Over the past 5 years, the France based Infogrames has owned the company and it has lost nearly a billion dollars in that time period over the course of 4 different chief executives.

The new Atari team in LA has been trying to fix things for the company and are headed up by Jeff Lapin who is well known in the game industry for his ability to help troubled companies turn around and earn once again. The digital based business is where Atari is headed now and if things go well they will be unveiling a large variety of titles for smart phones and social networks like Facebook in the coming years.

A recent study of young children by scientists and sociologists has shown that those kids who watch TV and play video games for many hours per day may be doubling their risk for developing problems similar to Attention Deficient Hyperactivity Disorder, more commonly known as ADHD, a leading cause of learning issues in school situations. As children get used to the rapid action that goes along with the way video games are edited and the flashing screens where the action goes down, chances are good that they will end up struggling to pay attention in a traditional classroom setting where things a lot slower and there is far less visual stimulation for them to focus on. The study showed that since the pacing of TV shows has sped up so dramatically since the 1980′s our brains have had to adjust for the faster editing style and try to capture images as they pass. According to an Associate Professor of Psychology, Douglas Gentile, this style of entertainment has caused the human brain to be retrained to deal with the influx of stimulus and try to rework thinking patterns and made it tougher for more calm pursuits to interest those who are not as familiar with them.

As expected, critics have not been kind to the study and have pointed out that children with proper parenting would not face this large of a diet of entertainment of any kind, but the classic struggle between the pro and anti gaming camps is bound to carry on for many years to come say experts in both child development.