Working up a virtual sweat

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Summer holidays once meant more time for children to play cricket and football with friends. They still do, but on computer screens where the virtual avatars of football and cricket have taken over as the hot favourites of school children. So the IPL fever is played out in the virtual world and little fans get their thrills from FIFA-12 and Football Manager-12 .

“Outdoor games and going to the movies don’t give the thrill of playing computer games. Also in a summer as hot as this, its hard to go out and play for even half-an-hour,” says Ben Abraham, a tenth standard student from Kakkanad in Kochi, admitting he is a video game addict. “I prefer playing PC games than going out. The best part about vacations is that I get a lot of time to play my favourite games,” he adds happily.

There are the few exceptions, of course. Rahul Prasad, a ninth standard student of Rajagiri Christu Jayanthi school in Kochi , may be a self- confessed video game addict too, but believes in striking a balance. “If I play four hours of video games, I’ll make sure to play four hours of football on the field too,” he says.

But the shopping malls with their game parlours which see a huge turnout of children every day tell you where their loyalties really lie. Nearly all the machines are occupied throughout the day by kids who are often accompanied by their parents. The favourites are mission oriented games like the Call of the Duty series, Assassin’s Creed, Mafia,Need for Speed series, FIFA-12 and Grand Theft Auto. The new additions on the most wanted list are Portal-2 and Mass Effect-2 .

Parents seem resigned to the trend and rather than ban it are trying to make sure the children play video games for only a limited time every day. Reports about video games helping children improve their creativity seem to have played a part in their new leniency.

But for parents who still frown on gaming fantasies, there are educational video games that teach science experiments, magic tricks and even cooking.

Interactive video games with infotainment are therefore going off shelves rapidly in retail stores as they help children understand the history of India, environment, the human body and so on .

But there is no denying that when parents are persuaded to get the most advanced gaming consoles for children, they are also eventually forced to tolerate a shift from their interest in outdoor and board games to their virtual avatars , and tolerate the obvious pitfalls.