This past Tuesday
Activision held their Family Game Summit at the Metropolitan Pavilion in NYC, debuting their current holiday releases and hosted by the original Punky Brewster actress turned author/blogger, Soleil Moon Frye. Here's a sneak peek at their new game and toy releases that will be making it on my holiday gift guide this year along with a few things to think about when giving games that I took away from the event:
The real premise of the day was to explore playing games with children, turning them into meaningful family time and the lessons that can be learned through interactive play. One thing that really resonated was when one of the summit panel member's, Suzanne Kantra from Techlicious.com, mentioned that when someone is playing a game, any game, 80% of the time they're loosing. They're failing but all the while also learning how to overcome obstacles, learning resilience to overcome things. A bit of true grit that translates into real everyday life. This was the absolute
Ah-ha! moment of the entire event for me. Playing games as a family (or with friends) really serves to strengthen a support system... to help everyone not to give up and keep trying to the very end.
Another person on the panel that I took a lot away from was Patricia Vance, president of the gaming ratings board, ESRB. The rating system has become even more inclusive recently, especially in an important area everyone's thinking about (or at least I am) before buying a game to give and that's both its content
and interactiveness. Now the rating system tells you about how much personal data might be collected or shared about the person playing it, if it allow the player to chat with strangers, buy things and so on. To make this easier to check, especially on the fly while holiday shopping, they now have an
ESRB ratings app to download.
Thank you so much to Activision for such an amazing event! Definitely keep and eye out for the new releases out now, with my personal top picks being the
Wipe Out and
Angry Birds games (rated E for everyone) along with
Bratz Boutique dolls & Game, Trash Packs, Transformers Prime, and Wreck-It Ralph. Event goodie bag/new releases c/o the Activision Family Game Summit.
Image: mam for Gave That
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