New media and breaking down barriers

This lecture sort of had a focus but also moved between lots of different topics which was a bit hard to keep track of.
   Firstly it started about the interaction between the creators of media and its users. As technology develops the trend is for things become more and more interactive.
This is an interactive mirror that's in a Bloomingdales shop in America

You can 'try on' clothes without actually putting them on, see yourself from every angle, and even put your image on an online feed where any friends logged in can give you feedback on the way you look.

     Talking about old games in this lecture I was reminded of something I used to love playing on my brother's Amstrad computer. Although each level was essentially the same I could play it for hours! The game had a lot of 'reply' value without having any narrative.

     

Another awesome game we had on our old 'windows 95' computer was Spelling Jungle! I've  never found anyone else who ever had this game. You were the little guy who had to 'go upriver to stop the flooding' (i never actually made it up to the top of the river, it got really hard!) by collecting the letters to spell out words. It didn't help hugely that the game was american so I learnt a lot of American spellings not English ones but never mind. 

Compare these to the new Xbox Kinect games, you can see how the player has a lot more influence on the computer. 

Although the technology of these games are obviously amazing I'm not sure the actual 'enjoyment value' of the games will be higher than older ones. Really as long as a game is entertaining and sucks you in it doesn't really matter what the graphics or technique of playing is.