OnlineMindPuzzles.com

Currently, the gaming industry is booming. Booming to a cool $7 Billion dollars, almost neck and neck with the film biz at $9 Billion. Affectionately called interactive entertainment, gaming went from being relatively new and unobtrusive, to becoming a leader of culture and technology. Now the creative genius of gamers is taking over the world, one new video game at a time.

With the push of new technology, gaming has grown to mammoth proportions. Now kids can play games on everything from gaming consoles, to computers, to TV’s and palm pilots, to cell phones! Students these days, instead of heading off to film school, are now heading off to interactive software development in the hopes of creating the next phenomenal gaming experience.

These days, video games are created with down to the minute detail displayed. Whether it’s to retrain your brain, find your focus, or teach you some sort of skills, games are now embedded in our society for ever more.

However, due to the explosive growth the gaming industry has seen, it now takes a budget of close to $10 million dollars to develop a new, hit game. Giant corporations like Microsoft and IBM are starting to favor profit more than creativity. That’s a bummer, because creativity is what exploded gaming in the first place!

Now folks are talking about how games can be improved for the public, by creating games with better stories and graphics, more complex characters, and story lines with hard ethical lines you must decide that you are for or against. The main goal? That a new game really makes you stop and THINK for a few moments!

Currently despite the explosive growth, the gaming industry is still in it’s infantile stages. Sort of like TV when it first came out! The saga will unfold, and nobody knows who will be left standing. Innovation is being demanded, but unfortunately the gaming industry has grown so large that it’s hard to pitch a new game idea to giants like Microsoft or Sony. They have just about seen it all. So, I think future innovations will start to come not in the games themselves, but in how we PLAY those games. Think Wii Fit and Guitar Hero!

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The Australian Open is a great tournament for tennis fans. Lots of tennis action going on, smacking the ball back and forth, you know, TENNIS stuff! Tennis advocates love the sport simply because to them, it’s a mind game. But what happens when the tournaments over, and there is no more action going on?

Enter TennisPuzzles.com. The site is intended for die hard tennis fans to play free interactive games like tournament themed cross word puzzles, word searches, and wordoku. The games can be printed out so players can have fun off line as well. Intermission anyone?

So what’s the draw exactly? Well, like I said, tennis is a mind game to many. So these tournament themed crosswords, word searches, etc are a great way for tennis players to keep their minds sharp and in tip top shape, as well as bone up on a bit of tennis history and trivia. What an entertaining way to study right? Too bad school work isn’t as entertaining for us!

The site currently features puzzles which give the player clues about the seasons first major. Matt Gaffney authors all three types of puzzles for the Tennis Wire Network exclusively. He has also written The Complete Idiots Guide To Crossword Puzzles And Word Games, among other things if you are interested! They are a great marketing feature for tennis companies looking to spread the word about their products and services to consumers.

They can get the word out by sponsoring a puzzle, and when they do that the puzzle gets logo branding, and customized clues. Pretty neat right? Fans of the puzzles can hold mini competitions between family and friends to feed their need for friendly competition, and exercise their brain at the same time.

So, if puzzles happen to be your thing, and you love tennis, run check out www.tennispuzzles.com. And check out the Tennis Wire Network, this site is only one in several related to the love of all things tennis!

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Doko, a new game from dokodrop.com put out by Mammoth Brand, is an interesting new game for the tween set ages 6-13 that looks like it could be the next Pokemon craze if enough interest is garnered. It’s a bit of a cross between a trading game and an online game.

The idea is to collect what is called Doko disks and earn points for them. Every time you get a new disk, you register it online and snag some points. The Doko disk can then be traded up to five times. Each person who registers it after you also snags some points, as well as sending an extra few points your way. Sort of like multi level marketing in a way.

Currently you can trade up Doko points for actual goods. While the selection at the moment isn’t huge, with enough interest and popularity that would definitely change! You have to register online and choose a unique user name and password which is how you log in to track your points.

So how do you snag some Doko disk tokens? Currently the company is hiding them in plain view in public places like parks and things. So take a peek around, you just might find one. Otherwise, they are releasing them in May to Toys R Us and other toys stores. Retail price is $7.99. You will also be able to purchase them online as well.

It could be a great little way to get kids interacting and trading with each other. The premise is that you can trade them all over the world, and you never know when the Doko disk you happen to nab has been to China and back. Each disk has a serial number and each time it’s registered it records the location. So you can go online and see where it’s been once you have one!

It’s a pretty neat idea and it will be interesting to see how much it grows. Although personally I can’t see myself paying $7.99 for a little Doko token. My kids will just have to seek out the free ones!

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With video game usage on the rise, it is no longer just a past time strictly reserved for kids. These days you could just be hearing a ‘Honey can we please get a Wii this Christmas?’ from your lovely but definitely over 25 year old wife or hubby!

With the spark of games created for self help purposes, designed to improve memory and train your brain, and the advent of the Nintendo Wii Fit to get gamers into tip top physical fitness, gaming is becoming a trend with just about everyone. It is becoming a preferred method of entertainment and almost a staple in every household.

But kids aren’t the only ones going gaga for video games, it’s their parents too! Consider the wildly popular World Of Warcraft. That game has some 11.5 million monthly subscribers sitting in front of their PC’s at home, creating characters and slaying fantasy creatures. Going on raids and forming guilds.

Considering the fact that WOW is a paid membership, how likely do you think it is that the bulk of the players are children. Not very likely! Nope the bulk of the players are adults, and even seniors. Some play alone, some play with their spouse or partner and some play with their kids. But the majority are definitely not 13 and under and are quite serious about their online gaming roles.

But why are these games becoming such a trend? One idea is that with everyone going through such hard economic times at the moment, video games are a welcome escape from reality. It’s easy to get lost in a virtual world, and pretend you are something that you might not necessarily be in real life. It’s nice to forget about the worlds problems for a moment and focus on fantasy.

The problem is letting the fantasy take over the real world indefinitely. Addiction could be a very real problem with the current gaming trend, especially in adults that have a weakness in that area. It remains to be seen what kind of a long term impact this may have on people in the future.

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