4 online games to encourage kids to take up sports

If your child is not willing to step out to catch a couple of football or basketball matches, here are a few games you can get her to play in the comfort of her home and develop a love for sports. After all, playing sports is not just an integral part of growing up but it is an activity that takes us a long way by keeping us physically fit and building essential life skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, team bonding, and more. Internet sports such as the NFL game online, FIFA World, and Need for Speed will hopefully inspire children to take a keen interest in sports.
 

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Football - NFL Game Day Heroes

When it comes to apps for kids, this one is certainly one of the best action-packed NFL games online. It includes a number of mini games like Image Blast, Rusher Under Pressure, Spot What's Not, Scrimmage Swap, Laces Out, Clutch Catch, End Zone Rush, and Food Flick. Players will have to race against time and can compete with each other on the same Wi-Fi network, which makes it a wonderful family game too! Plan a fun family game night where you will have to guess team logos, swipe same team helmets to form a line of more than 3, fill up football shaped balloons with water, swipe the screen to take a shot at the goal post, and do other NFL-related activities! Here are a few quick reasons why the NFL game online is an awesome one to get kids interested in sports –

      1.    Kids get to play the game in real time which is a major inspiration to them. They can interact and communicate while playing the game with their friends and family in the same Wi-Fi network!
2.       Since the entire NFL online game series consists of 8 mini games, the kids rarely get tired of them. The Golden Football that will appear randomly on screen will give the players a massive lead ahead of others in terms of points.
3.       In-game items like mud and water splats will give players an added advantage over the others.
4.       If kids are not confident of joining a multiplayer game on the server, they can practice in an individual mode before joining the big league!

Football - FIFA World

This is a free sports game for PCs that can be downloaded from www.ea.com/fifa-world. EA brings together the world’s biggest sports franchise, FIFA, to the global audience comprising sports lovers. The award-winning console gameplay and multiple popular modes make the game a friendly and competitive activity among friends, and is immensely popular with kids. If your child is too lazy to venture out to catch a quick game with her friends, introduce her to the FIFA World game that comes with easy-to-learn mouse based controls, exciting live football scores, plus tons of social connectivity features.

Golf - Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 13

Launched for the Xbox 360 Kinect, this season of the world's #1 selling golf game is back with a controller-free, voice-enabled and body tracking sports simulation! Your real time movements, swings, and strokes will come alive as you create your own team, take forward Tiger Woods’ legacy, and compete against and with some of the “best golf players in the world”!

Car racing - Need for Speed Most Wanted

Agreed, NFS is not essentially a kids’ game, but it can nevertheless be played by kids who are interested in car racing. Parents must oversee that the child doesn’t get addicted to this game. Neither does it feature mini-games like the NFL game online nor is it a full-version free game like the others, but it definitely guarantees some cool thrills and chills! Players will have to outrun the cops, outsmart their rivals which only come about when the player has practiced enough, and reach the final point. The game will continuously challenge the player’s decision making and problem solving skills with the numerous hurdles thrown in their way.

The list above is just the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to the ocean of fun online and mobile games related to sports. Explore the endless variety, see which ones your little one enjoys the most, and slowly watch the growing interest in sports!

Let's Talk History - how did games on electronic devices come about?

Image credit: Nelo Hotsuma

The study of past events is history. With gaming having become a billion dollar industry and gamers coming in all shapes, ages and sizes, it was time to visit the past. In the video games industry, the time that has elapsed since its inception has not been very long, but it already has considerable history. The gaming industry was spawned by research in the missile defense systems in the 1940s. Slowly research in computer science brought about development of games on mainframe computers in the 1950s and 1960s. This eventually developed into games on different platforms like arcade, PCs, mainframes, consoles and video games. By today’s standards older games were primitive. Today’s games have rich textures, brilliant full-color graphics and sophisticated sound.

Computer Space was one of the first viable games in the 1970s. Nolan Bushnell who developed it, also started Atari which developed one of the first commercially successful arcade game called Pong. The entertainment industry in the US, Europe and Japan grew in leaps and bound. Video gaming entered popular culture and has left a huge mark as more and more people across age-groups are taken in by them. The Japanese dominate the hand held console segment even as we have seen eight generations of them.

As the internet technology matured, online games became the norm. Soon they became multiplayer and Massively Multiplayer Online Games, giving rise to technologies and acronyms like MMOG and MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Player Games).

In the last decade, development budgets increased as gamers wanted more immersive experiences and gaming was a commercially successful business. As motion sensors matured and prices dropped, they were introduced into gaming paraphernalia, increasing the immersive experience of players. Simultaneously  more people were converted into gamers by introducing simplified casual games. 

As the technology of cloud computing matured, rendering of the game happened elsewhere and it was streamed to the player. With convergence of technology smart phones are the new devices to play games on.

Even as I write this, time is passing and the present is being rendered into the past.