Many of the games played on home computers are more or less identical with those in video arcades. Increasingly, however, computer games are becoming more sophisticated, more difficult, and no longer dependent on elapsed time, as in arcade games, where a coin pays for a set number of minutes. The computer games of today can go on for many hours, days and even months! Graphics have improved to the point where they almost resemble movies, rather than the rough, jagged video scenes of past games. Some of the newest arcade games generate their graphics through laser disc. Many include complicated sounds and music.
Given an imaginative programmer, a sophisticated video game has the potential for offering an almost limitless array of exotic worlds and fantastic situations. The player is the game's protagonist, the person who must work his or her way through a web of possible actions, interacting with the game's reactions, and winning through a combination of dexterity and strategy. There are those who feel that in order to play, one must accept the values implicit in these interactive games, which like the often condemned Dungeons and Dragons, which may involve extremely violent or aberrant events and characters.
Other types of games, especially those used which use simulation, are simply highly imaginative tests of intelligence and skill. Defenders of the games claim that they help prepare children for later computer use and give them the opportunity to learn how to reach and carry pit decisions quickly.
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