Other PC games also appeal to adults in many ways; one is through online games, whether they be strategy-based games like Warcraft, role-playing games such as Ever Quest and Guild Wars, or first-person shooters such as Counterstrike: Day of Defeat. No matter what genre the game might be, they all appeal to the competitive nature of its players. After all, playing against a computer opponent can be unsatisfying in that it is hard to feel victorious against an opponent who, for all intents and purposes, does not care whether it loses or wins. Through the Internet, however, players can find other players of similar skill levels (or higher or lower levels, it’s all a matter of taste) to compete with, test their abilities against, and prove to themselves and to the world at large how skillful they are. I need hardly point out that competitiveness and rivalry are not traits that are exclusively seen in and enjoyed by children.

A more commonly seen type of game, however, is the console game. Ever since the days of Atari and Nintendo, consoles have grown by leaps and bounds and now rival movies in the race to advance computer graphics, and consoles have an edge over computers in that they don’t need to be upgraded every few months. One would be hard put to find a household in the US that does not have at least one of the three major consoles: Nintendo’s GameCube, Sony’s Playstation2, and Microsoft’s Xbox (at the time of this article, at least. As this article is being written, the Xbox 360 has just been released, and the game market is preparing for the releases of the Nintendo Revolution and Playstation3). And yet, despite the wide diversity of games on the market, many people still retain the notion that video games should be for children. Perhaps this is because some of the most popular games on the market, such as Nintendo’s Mario Bros. series, tend to have cartoon-y graphics, or are based on popular children’s cartoons and movies, such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games. But as with PC games, some console games are made for adult enjoyment and are rated as such for content. The ever-popular Resident Evil series, for example, often contain graphic violence that includes being brutally attacked (and possibly killed) by zombies. The controversial Grand Theft Auto series goes even further, in which the player plays as a member of the Mafia, and carries out a series of missions that involves stealing cars, picking up prostitutes, and beating up other people (and sometimes all three at once). For obvious reasons, both of these series are rated M and cannot be purchased by minors, yet both are best-sellers, showing that a growing number of adults are enjoying console games themselves instead of just handing over games to their kids. After all, how many people, while watching movies or TV have thought, “if it was me, I’d do a heck of a lot better than that character”? Video games allow people to experience it for themselves, to feel that they are the main character for once, sort of like playing an interactive movie.