Interactive Entertainment Saigon Style By Tran Thi My Linh
Entertainment is an indispensable element in human life. Leisure activities like reading books or watching TV only allows passive involvement. With games, people tend to enjoy themselves more as it is more interactive. This trend is also the same in Vietnam.
Interactive Entertainment (IE) can refer to any type of game in which the player's actions directly affect the game. In addition, IE is used to describe video games or other types of multimedia entertainment where the actions and outcomes can be controlled by the player. Therefore, the reason why people like playing interactive games is that these games allow player to use skill or make decision to control character’s actions to investigate the storyline of the game.
Why is IE becoming more and more popular? Back in the past, Vietnamese do not have easy to access to IE. Few families had the ability to own a computer or a game console; therefore, most children end up going to cyber café to play games. Unlike the past, Vietnamese people, nowadays, have more chance to approach IE. Along with the development of technology, many types of game machines (computers, Playstation, Nintendo, Wii, etc.) are available and even cheaper than before People can also afford due to the recent development in Vietnam’s economy. It is obvious that IE is more and more popular in Vietnam. Among many kinds of games, somehow I can say computer game is the most popular one. Unlike other types of game machines (Playstation, Wii, Xbox 360, etc.), computer has become a necessary household appli-
ance in most of families in Vietnam. Moreover, we can easily see that there are
“...IE is not only a mean of entertainment and just for relaxation but also has advantages for human’s mind and sometimes physical...” many Internet café which has been operating for a long time and attracted many customers, especially students, coming to play online games. Benefits of IE Many people claim that these games do not bring any benefits and some parents do not allow their children to play; however, IE is not only a mean of entertainment and relaxation but also has advantages for the mind and sometimes physical attributes. Actually, IE helps us in improving eye and hand coordination. You can easily realize that most of games require players taking great coordination of the eyes and hands in order to react to the situation, especially difficult and dangerous one. Well, most of gamers easily realize this benefit; however, I want to indicate an example. I think that most of people know about a very popular and famous game named Mario. We easily consider that playing Mario needs eye and hand coordination. We must control the character to run, jump and hit the head of enemies. Sometimes we also need to run faster in order to jump further