gaming as familiar competition

Something that resonated with me in the reading, First Respondents, and In-Class Hosts that was only covered a little bit in class on Tuesday is the significance of competition in the development of games initially in the military sector, and in their continued expansion to this day.  It seems as if the competitive nature of most video games leads majorly to their appeal.  After all, what is the point of playing a game if you can only win against a computer controlled opponent?  If you really think about it, many single player games have a competitive aspect as well, because even though you aren’t playing against another person within the actual game world, competition often arises between friends and family as to who can do the best or get the highest score.  A great example of that is in most arcade games.  Although there are some that were multiplayer from the beginning (pong) many arcade games (pinball comes to mind) rely heavily on the concept of “breaking the high score” as appeal for the game itself.  This can also be related back to the concept of familiarity that we were talking about in class, because these types of competition exist not only in games, but in many aspects of life outside the game universe.  Kaitlin makes a good comparison of this sense of familiarity with games like pong and more modern concepts like that of the wii and xbox kinect, which incorporate both a sense of sensory familiarity with their interfaces, and a very real sense of competition.  I think it would be an interesting topic to explore in class as to what aspects of friendly, or unfriendly competition are shared between video games and other parts of society, and how video games can create a competitive outlet that can’t necessarily be filled by other forms of entertainment and competitiveness.