Friday, 20 January 2012

The Magic of Kinect

This post is a little personal to me as I have found that The Kinect has actually brought my family, and indeed the families of my friends who have a Kinect together.

I was never a fan of the Wii, I found the lack of real connection between the baton movement and the icon movement on screen confusing for me.
The Kinect removed the void and allows true intuitive play. No buttons are required to learn before you can begin playing, everything is drip fed to you simply and you really can just 'jump in and play'.
There is an 8 year gap between my brother and I which can make things complicated when it comes to sharing interests as we are effectively from different worlds most of the time. He has his own house and a full time job, I'm in the first year of university! I am pleased to say however that after I got a Kinect and showed him we were both up and playing in minutes. He then went out and bought one the same day for his own Xbox. I have seen my boyfriends parents playing Kinect together in their sitting room as something different to do together as a couple. My boyfriend and I in fact spent new years eve playing on the Kinect with them both on the new Kinect Sports game, his little brother joining in too occasionally.

Recently I showed my Kinect to my 50 something father and I was surprised to find that he absolutely loved it! Too often I have found parents (not always my own) seem to be naturally negative towards games as I feel they still see them as the isolating all consuming pursuits that were around in their youth (I.e. arcade games). I am proud to say that Dad was memorised by the Kinect and he too vowed that he must buy one! I look forward to being able to gently introduce him into 'the Xbox way' as I call it. It is really wonderful and refreshing to be able to bridge the generation gap with technology rather than extend it for once and I am truly excited at where this trend will go next.



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Robin Silcock

I am a Second Year Games Art and Design student at Norwich University of the Arts. After exploration of a number of roles in my first year, I am now looking to graduate as a 3D Artist with applicable skills in Maya, Mudbox, ZBrush and Photoshop. I understand that my skills in this field are not there yet - but I aim to achieve this goal through consistently working through the programs in my University and Personal Projects. I love to be busy - I have always had a lot of things on my plate since the age of 7 where I successfully balanced school with Ballet, Tap, Horse-Riding, French, Piano and Singing Lessons! In the same fashion, my university schedule is just as hectic and varied; I am a Peer Mentor to first year students, Student Rep for Second Year, and President of the Enterprise Society. Like I said, I love to be busy! I am a Games Hippie - so to speak - I believe that Games if designed and harnessed in the right way, will be able to help solve many of the global issues we have today - even if it starts off in a small way. Just look at the positive effects that Facebook and Twitter have already had... When navigating my blog;
  • Works in Progress - This section is a constantly running account of all my current projects - personal and for university. It will contain reference images and website links and sometimes less than coherent posts, so be prepared!
  • Finished Pieces - This is where you will find my more polished artwork. Looking for help with Maya? Check out the posts tagged "Maya How-To's"