Get Paid To Play Video Games

Many computer gamers devote a lot of hours each day improving their skills playing their favorite computer games.

Most are not aware they can get paid to play video games, or if they are have no idea how.

If you are one of those obsessive computer gamers, there are many tips you can use right now to find ways to get payed to play video games from www.squidoo.com/paid_to_play_video_games .

Those more serious or looking for a job testing video games, and many other insider tips to make money playing games, testing them or demonstrating them can sign up for our free newsletter at www.paidtoplayvideogames.info .

A history of playing games

Spacewar! - 1962

Arguably the first video game as we know it, Spacewar! was developed by ambitious student hackers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A simple two-player battle game, it ran on a gigantic mainframe computer and was stored on reels of paper tape

Multi-User Dungeon - 1978

Created by an Essex University student, MUD let people all over the world adventure in the same game for the first time. It sowed the seeds of modern phenomena such as World of Warcraft - and entranced the engineers who developed the internet

Home Computers - 1982

Sold to parents as educational devices, computers such as the Sinclair Spectrum truly succeeded because of their early prowess as gaming systems. In the end education won out - a whole generation of kids became computer literate and went on to turn Britain into a game-development powerhouse

3-D Graphics - Mid-1990s

There was an explosion in the Nineties in the development of 3-D technology, fuelled by consumer demand for increasingly complex 3-D games. Prices tumbled and performance improved exponentially - and the knock-on effect opened up 3-D imaging to a host of medical and military applications

PlayStation - 1995

Sony's entry to the video game market precipitated a huge change not only in video games, but also in youth culture as a whole. Games escaped the schoolyard and started being promoted in nightclubs - and the new obsession with Tekken, WipEout and Final Fantasy has fuelled trends in fashion, music and cinema ever since

Nintendo DS - 1997

With its sights set firmly on new markets, Nintendo's ground-breaking handheld console featured an intuitive touch-screen interface - and a host of software designed to break out of gaming's existing congregation and provide entertainment to young and old, male and female. It worked. The diminutive system is set to sell its 100 millionth unit this year

Volume rises for music video games

It turns out everyone just wants to be a rock star.

Music-genre video games "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" are bona-fide smash hits, entering the rarefied air once reserved for only the elite first-person shooters, "Mario" games or sports titles. And success breeds imitation.

Music games seemed to be everywhere at this week's E3 video game trade show and it wasn't just Activision Blizzard Inc showing off its upcoming "Guitar Hero: World Tour" or MTV Games, a unit of Viacom Inc, providing a sneak peek at "Rock Band 2." Both are due out later this year.

Nintendo Co Ltd debuted "Wii Music," a game that lets you simulate playing over 60 different instruments, while Konami Corp and Microsoft Corp also showed off new music games of their own on the horizon.

"Music has really become the killer application," said Don Mattrick, a Microsoft senior vice president, who runs the company's Xbox business.

Music genre games accounted for 16 percent of U.S. video game software sales in 2007 and comprised a staggering 44 percent of last year's software sales growth, according to research from investment bank UBS Securities.

The genre evolved out of the once popular rhythm game genre. In rhythm games like Konami's "Dance Dance Revolution," players score points by stepping on a touch sensitive pad in time with generic music.

In music games, the touch sensitive pad was replaced with a toy musical instrument and the generic songs were replaced with recognizable rock hits, giving players the simulated experience of playing real instruments.

"It is really a hot genre that's bringing in families and people that never played games before," said Electronic Arts Games Label president Frank Gibeau. EA is the distributor for "Rock Band."

WII CAN PLAY TOO

Nintendo's music game grabbed the most headlines. "Wii Music," designed by the company's game creator Shigeru Miyamoto, lets players use the Wii's motion-sensing controllers to play the saxophone, violin or other instruments.

The initial reaction to the game seemed lukewarm. Some dismissed it as too basic because it does not keep score and does not allow an out of tune note.

More faithful to the genre is Konami's "Rock Revolution."

The game features 40 songs and will offer more once the game is released. It comes with a guitar and a bass, but Konami is especially proud of the game's drum set, which includes a foot pedal and six drum pads to beat.

"All the fame and glory goes to the lead singer and guitarist, but the drummer is often the heart of the band," said Konami spokeswoman Mondonna Akharan.

Konami, which enjoyed success with singing game "Karaoke Revolution," pioneered the space with a "Guitar Hero"-like arcade game nine years ago in Japan called "GuitarFreaks."

Microsoft also introduced a new singing game called "Lips," a new game exclusive to its Xbox 360 platform.

It will come with two wireless, motion-sensitive microphones and players can sing along to songs from their own music collection in their iPod or other digital music players as long as the tracks are not rights protected.

The microphones can be played like tambourines or a cowbell and waving it in the air can prompt the crowd to follow suit.

At a time when the music industry is battling online piracy and declining sales, the popularity of music genre games has provided a silver lining for both artists and record labels.

AC/DC signed a deal to make its songs available on "Rock Band 2" while Guns N' Roses will debut a single from its long-awaited new album on the game.

Metallica's new album will be made available for download on "Guitar Hero III" on the day the album is released in September. It will also be licensed for "Guitar Hero: World Tour" game when the title becomes available later this year.

Nintendo DS Lite

The Nintendo DS Lite, like the original Nintendo DS, is a portable gaming system with two vertically tiered screens. On the bottom is a touch screen that allows you to use a stylus or a finger for anything from selecting options to moving characters. There's also a normal face-button layout that allows a more standard method of control. The system plays its own proprietary cartridges (which are somewhere between SD and CompactFlash cards in size), in addition to its near-full backward compatibility with Game Boy Advance (GBA) titles--the system will not play multiplayer modes of GBA games, unfortunately. While DS cartridges are much smaller in capacity than the PSP's UMDs, they play without the often unbearable load times of Sony's proprietary format.

As its name suggests, the Nintendo DS Lite is a much more compactly designed system; at 0.83 by 2.83 by 5.25 inches when closed and weighing in at 7.66 ounces, it's 39 percent smaller and 21 percent lighter than its predecessor. The rounded corners are more finely tapered, and the top and bottom sides are symmetrical, avoiding the underbite-like look of the original's oversize bottom half. It's a much more pocket-friendly system than the original DS. Despite the smaller overall size, though, the trademark twin screens have the same dimensions.

Nintendo DS Lite Video Review