San Francisco Giants pitcher Ryan Vogelsong talks video games.
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What are your thoughts about what they can do with the baseball games today?
I’m amazed. It’s the one thing that I don’t really play anymore is baseball. If I’m playing something it’s usually football or golf or hockey, so today is really the first time I’ve seen a new baseball game and it’s pretty incredible the graphics and the different things they can do and the facial features is pretty amazing.
How popular are player ratings when a new baseball game like MLB 13 The Show comes out?
There’s definitely a group of guys that get them the first day they come out and they’re always talking about them the next day because they stay up all night and play them. And if you want to know, there’s definitely some people in that clubhouse that are going to find out for you. Guys on our team are definitely interested in playing them and we definitely have gamers on our team and they take their units on the road with them and play in the hotel. Sometimes it’s three or four guys in a room some nights playing games and it’s definitely a big part of our sport, that’s for sure.
What role do you feel these video games play in helping to grow the sport of baseball?
I think it allows people that aren’t seeing other teams that aren’t in their city. It’s something that was probably missing years ago. I know growing up being a Phillies fan, I got to live in Philly, but a Phillies fan that’s in Boston might not ever get to see the Phillies on TV as much as he wants. So he can just turn on his game and he’s there and he’s seeing his players every day, where before that that wasn’t a possibility. What it does is it helps kids to like teams that aren’t in their area.
When it comes to yourself and playing with your son, can you talk a little bit about what games you actually play on Kinect?
Yeah, we’ve been doing a lot of sports. We’ve been playing the sports ones like Motion Sports and Kinectimals and then we were doing the Elmo and Cookie Monster. Just recently we were doing the Dora Dance stuff, but he’s still his dad’s kid. He’s a sports guy. He wants to play the football and the baseball and the skiing one a lot, so that’s usually the first choice and Kinectimals is usually second.
