Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Video Game "Nutrition" Facts

Around 20 years ago, The FDA mandated that most food products be labeled with a nutritional label listing various elements such as fat, cholesterol and protein along with their measurement per serving. This informational addition to the food product spawned a new sector in the food industry that marketed their food products as low-fat, low-calorie foods. Suffice to say, the nutrition label has had a major impact on food companies and consumers alike by creating certain groups of consumers that would only buy a food product based solely on the contents of the nutrition label.

So what if video games had a similar "nutrition" label based on the core elements of that video game? For instance, would consumers be less inclined to purchase the next best 3D action-adventure combat game based on more core system-specific hard data such as the inclusion/frequency/exclusion of individual combat system elements?

This was one of the random thoughts that popped into my head when I was thinking of a clever way to list the core ingredients of an accessible combat system. By no means is this particular "nutrition" list comprehensive or even weighted correctly. In the future, I'll be going into more detail for each of these accessible combat system elements and also regurgitating some of the topics written about by these guys.