Do your Children Play Video Games Online with Unhealthy Products Placed in Them?

If you are a company that needs to sell to children, merely to throw together an advertisement with children happily running home and digging into a bowl of Cheerios, or something won’t do anymore. That would be laughably old-fashioned to today's children soaked in technology. Corporations have long since realized that they need to tap their audiences by speaking to them in a language they would appreciate - video games. Your child likes to play video games online; there's nothing wrong with that; especially when the game happens to be a particularly creative and entertaining one - something like the Create a Comic online game that allows a child to throw together her own comic strip in a matter of minutes.

A parent who watches her child play such a game could even be secretly pleased at how healthy the game is. Upon looking closer though, any parent could quickly realize that the "game" cleverly pushes some unwholesome snack, junk food or other child-targeted product. When marketers make their own apps and games to target children with wherever they use technology, it can become very difficult for parents to instill any principles in children of choosing a responsible diet. The worst part of course, is that children who like to play video games that advertise surreptitiously, go and spread the word among their friends. The companies might as well pay these kids to act as their brand ambassadors.

The first lady is concerned enough with this kind of tactic that the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity has squarely placed the blame for the weight problems faced by America's children on these unfair marketing practices. And the Federal Trade Commission has a study coming out on what it thinks of these tricks, too.

For the longest period of time, television was about the only medium that marketers could reach children by. Since television has been around for this long, the government has had time to evolve rules to restrict what these companies do to influence children. When children switch to Facebook and video games though, these things are so new that the government hasn't had the time yet. It's up to parents to step in until the government does.

Children are being drawn to these websites to play video games and manufacturers are heavily advertising to them in ways they never would be allowed to on television. Phones and computers happen to be a very personal kind of medium. The user sits close to the computer are holds the phone close to her person. It's a real coup for these companies that they should have access to children's minds in such an intimate fashion.

Do you really want to allow this to happen to your child? You be the judge.

Help your Child Entertain Himself - Show him how to Play Jigsaw Puzzles

There are many fundamental skills and abilities children need to hone growing up,  that are beautifully addressed when they play jigsaw puzzles. Even if these puzzles do seem like a lot of hard work, you'd be surprised how often children go for them with just as much enthusiasm as they would for a game out in the playground or at the videogame console. There is something about solving something that takes shape before their very eyes that children find particularly appealing. Of course, maintaining a child's interest in these puzzles requires that you find exactly the right kind for their tastes and for their age. Let's look at a few of the most popular puzzles there are today for 5-year-olds - both of the regular kind and free online ones.

Let's start with the world of cars from Mattell and Disney. It's a rather simple 24 piece puzzle that should be just the right thing to help draw a child into the world of jigsaw puzzles for the first time. As a puzzle, it's neither overly simple, nor too complex. The fact that it's about a famous movie with talking cars, makes it just right for most little boys. A lot of manufacturers who design these products seem to entirely forget the audience they are trying to market themselves to. Little boys can be very rough with their toys - especially if their toys are made of cardboard. Manufacturers however just go and make them out of thin and fussy material. The World of Cars game is just right for the way little children play jigsaw puzzles. The pieces are made of heavy duty cardboard that are virtually indestructible. The completed puzzle makes an image that's about a square foot in size.

The SpongeBob Squarepants jigsaw puzzle would make for a great step up from the simple challenges presented by the World of Cars. Children happen to be crazy about Nickelodeon's sea-dwelling dishwashing sponge. Any child above I should appreciate this 70 piece puzzle. It certainly does have what it takes to completely involve a child.

These puzzles however, cost money. At some point, you are likely to wonder if there isn't something you could get your child for free. As a matter fact online jigsaw puzzles fit that bill quite nicely. JigZone  happens to the a wonderful destination for children who can't resist puzzles, wherever they find them. They have puzzles for every mood and every occasion. If it's Christmas for example, they have dozens of Christmas related puzzles that your child can take advantage of. Around Independence Day, you have patriotic-themed ones. What does it feel like to play jigsaw puzzles online? For the most part, it feels exactly as it does playing real tactile puzzles.

Do Products that Promise to Train your Brain really Work?

Seniors who constantly worry about retaining their mental acuity into their old age these days, have all kinds of businesses to look to that aim to help them stay on their mental toes. Retirement communities and many businesses have lately been involving themselves in promoting mental fitness - brain exercises, classes and games that they promise will do a lot for an elderly person's attention span, memory and alertness. They aren't hawking these products to an unreceptive market either. Seniors today, are truly interested in staying mentally fit. And the "train your brain" market that sells everything from classes to video games to help with mental fitness has tripled in value to about a half billion dollars a year.

Mental fitness has become so hot that you couldn't run a retirement community today without something by way of mental fitness. One out of two retirement communities today will offer you some way to train your brain.

Software, games - the high-tech market is all over the mental fitness market. The question with anything like this though is, are they any use? Are all these marketers of products merely taking advantage of an unregulated market?

That's what some experts are saying. These high-tech brain games and all these expensive activities, neurologists say, are no better at training your brain and keeping it stimulated and alert than a regular crossword puzzle.  The one healthy side to this trend of course is knowing that old folks these days are completely engaged with staying alert and productive to the day they pass on. Seniors these days, according to a poll done by the Associated Press, are deeply concerned about mentally failing and not being able to command the dignity and respect they have their whole lives. In fact, according to the poll, more seniors today are worried about their mental sharpness than about dying. And so, here we have a market that's completely poised to take advantage of this degree of concern - products trying to train your brain will make up a $10 billion industry in five years.

Not all research stands against products that promise to train your brain though. One game for instance, tasks you at trying to find specific words amid a bunch of other words while you are distracted by random noises. Researchers find that games such as this one do actually help people with their ability to pay attention for a reasonably extended period of time. People just shouldn't come to these games hoping for quick results.

What these products cannot do is, arrest or reverse Alzheimer's. And also, if you are already quite sharp, there's nothing more these games can do for you. These aren't some kind of scientifically-proven secret method. They're just your regular mental activities that can help you stay on your toes like any other activity could. If you would like to try one of these games out before actually buying them, you could find some for free at BrainExperiment.org.

Performance Enhancers for a Video Game

Let's see here, when was the last time you heard of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)? It must have been when you read about how it was a research project there that first dreamed up the Internet that was to take over the world later. So it could be fair to say that you harbor quite a bit of respect for this government agency. But then of course, nothing’s really interesting until you add a bit of scandal to it. For the DARPA, scandal would come in the shape of serious research that tries to find out ways in which a video game player might develop better reflexes and strategizing.

Well, that can't be so bad, you're telling yourself. Until you hear about what they think improves your video gaming skills and reflexes - it's passing low-voltage electricity through your brain. Actually, all joking aside, this research really might get somewhere (as it is bound to when you're dealing with such a august institution). Passing electricity through your brain not only makes you better at your gaming, it makes you better all over - you become sharper, you learn quicker. It will do that, that is, when it doesn't set your scalp on fire.

So perhaps you curious as to why they chose to test subjects on a video game (and honestly, you probably want to know what the game is that they used). It is a game the military uses to train soldiers on tour to Iraq called DARWARS Ambush. It isn't all that scandalous after all – if they were just trying to find ways to make their soldiers perform better.

So how much power can an ordinary 9 V battery deliver to your head? It's no more than a bit of a tingle - no more than 2 mA. But subjects did perform twice as well as people who received less of a jolt. So is this any different than what they do at mental institutions with electroconvulsive therapy? Of course it is - those shocks are truly strong ones.

Interestingly enough, the idea that a small amount of power delivered to the brain can boost mental performance has been around for more than a century. The formal name for it is Trans-Cranial Direct Current Stimulation; and it's been proven to help with a better ability to form strategies, remember things, and so on. Of course, gamers, once they read about this are right away going to be dreaming about creaming their opponents by hooking themselves up to batteries.

Anyone who might seriously consider doing such a thing needs to first read about the experiences other video game players report. Apparently, it can get very unpleasant.

Pot Farm-Will It Be As Addictive As Other Addictive Online Games?

Addictive online games like Farmville elicit one of two kinds of reaction in people: they either totally love them or they think that it qualifies you for a padded cell passing your time planting rows of carrots and paying cash for imaginary tractors and fertilizer. And thinking it's addictive fun. Downtown Eastside Games believes that this is a scenario that's rather too black-and-white. And so, they've added a rather fun wrinkle to the Facebook farming equation - and it's a wrinkle that should really play well to audiences who feel that Farmville is rather too uptight.

The game is called Pot Farm. At first glance, the game has a lot in common with Farmville. There is the same two-dimensional-looking farm and vegetation and there is something about the way it is all drawn that calls Farmville to mind, too. But when a bunch of almost bare nekkid and unwashed hippies from the 60s show up, you know you're not on wholesome Farmville territory anymore. The game puts you in a forest with marijuana weeds all over the place.

Pot Farm has won awards in its native Canada; somehow, one doesn't envision this happening over here. In Canada, with their European leanings, they really think pot is right on. Downtown Eastside is so pleased with its new pot formula that they’re trying to add pot to every hit Facebook game out there. Where the creator of Farmville hits pay dirt was Mafia Wars, Downtown Eastside has a (pot-addled) rival in Pot Farm Raiders. Take the violent thugs away and replace them with barely-standing stoners, and you have yourself a new game. If you thought that addictive online games were trouble, wait till you see how addictive they can be with pot in them.

As a new game developer, how do you know that you've finally arrived in the big leagues? You know when the Fox News Channel stirs up a bit of dirt about you and calls your product “controversial”.

Basically, the game as about a bunch of peaceful stoners who hang about, garden a bit and grow and harvest pot. And from time to time, when the going gets a bit slow (when you're not running away from the cops or organizing pot parades), you go and steal pot from your neighbors. Playing the game, you notice that you get to learn a lot about the different kinds of marijuana there are and what's good for them raising them. Once you have a successful crop, you sell it all for money; and the more money you have, the more hippie stuff you can buy - a rude pond to swim in, home distilling equipment for your own hooch, a nacho vending machine, and so on. It's everything you need for a slow addle-brained party. If you can't wait to grow enough crop for all this neat stuff, you can pay cash for them just like on Farmville of course.

Of course, the most entertaining part of being on Pot Farm is that you can't believe that you're actually playing such a game (and your Facebook friends know it). It's just so rebellious. And perhaps that's how they intended it.

It isn’t just Players who do the Button-Pushing in these Action Computer Games

There's a scene in the movie Singin’ in the Rain where when a movie mogul gives a demonstration of the first talking movie to a crowd of high society party attendees, one uppercrust woman sniffs and says, “I think it's vulgar”. That's practically been the kind of reception every entertainment innovation has ever had from the establishment - every new kind of music, sport, television show, comic book; and as far as video games are concerned, the cold reception hasn't ended. And while most video games get made for wholesome family entertainment, there are a few titles that come out every year that do walk a thin line. Crossing some line from time to time is only to the expected in an industry that tries very hard to push the envelope. But still, videogame haters jump all over them, focusing on these particular games, to try to demonstrate how video games herald the end of civilization. Let's take a look at the action computer games that get the most negative press.

Let's start with a title that practically defines the action computer games genre - Grand Theft Auto. One of the biggest videogame franchises in the world, the game seems to encourage young people to glamorize and follow a life of thuggery. The game is all about stealing cars, beating and killing people and grabbing what could only be hookers, for fun. On the San Andreas version of this game, the designers actually plugged in some actual graphic sexual content for some real street cred. The FTC didn't like it at all and not only did they fine the publishers, they made them pull the product from shelves.

With some action computer games, it's like the designers are actually trying to earn the genre a terrible reputation. Consider the Manhunt franchise that first came out about eight years ago. You know how they say that guns make it easy for people to commit violence? The designers of this game certainly took that opinion to heart. The violence in this game, you certainly get your hands dirty for. You don't resort to guns or bombs or cars to inflict violence in this videogame. You pick up a baseball bat and smash a person with blood and gore all over the place. Sometimes, you strangle them; sometimes you suffocate them with plastic. This game actually comes from the creative makers of Grand Theft Auto. As unwholesome as the game might be, it certainly has pushed the envelope in action computer games. Now into its second version, the game has sold 2 million copies.

There is a lot that you hear about school bullying in the media today - with unfortunate cases like the Phoebe Prince suicide sending up public disgust for the practice all the time. One game publisher found that it would be a great way to earn a little street cred to publish a game that glorified school bullying. And Bully was the result. Of course, critics of action computer games were all over it one more time. There is actually a bit of sexual violence in the bullying shown in the game too. The courts though deemed it not egregious enough and allowed the title to be sold. When it comes to action computer games, publishers certainly know how to push people’s buttons.