As expected, the news coming out of this year’s E3 is dominated by 3-D gaming – the glasses-wearing, TV-replacing kind of 3-D, that is. Which makes the cost of being an early adopter a mightily expensive one. Fortunately, video game companies are helping us ease the burden of buying all this new hardware with some forward planning and creative design.

But is it all worth it? Do we need 3-D that bad?

The answer, in our opinion, is “yes”.

As parents, let’s think back to the first time we took our kids to a 3-D movie. It could have been one of the recent theatrical blockbusters, it could have been Mickey’s Philharmagic or Muppet*Vision 3-D  at Walt Disney World. Think about that experience. It probably went something like, the kids kept removing their glasses to a comparison between what was real and what their eyes were tricking them into believing what was happening, and the subsequent and ongoing struggle as a parent to have them keep their glasses on.

But then once they did, something magical happened. They started to interact with what was going on in the movie. They would reach out and grab something that seemed to appear dangling in the space before them. Or duck out of the way when something was thrown at them. But they started to give in to the illusion and embrace the experience of being immersed into another world.

And then two things happened. One, their experience was stunted by a lack of reciprocation with the movie. Two, the experience ended all too quickly, and you couldn’t resist your children’s begging and pleading enough to avoid getting back in line for the umpteenth time. Hey, we’re parents – it’s hard for us to say “no”!

So what if there was a way to better that experience, by prolonging the journey and improving the interaction component? Well, that is exactly what 3-D gaming will do.

It is truly a revolution, in the same way 3-D graphics were in the ’90s. It will further bring us into the experience, to truly surround us with a world that is fantastical and wonderful, with challenges we never even dreamed were possible. Critics think 3-D gaming isn’t necessary, that it won’t bring any benefit. But we disagree, if only for the explanation we just gave.

But what will this do for our children? This is where we see the biggest benefit.

3-D will be improved exponentially when partnered with the right tools, and we see those as the Playstation Move and Nintendo 3DS. With the Playstation Move, children won’t just reach out into an empty mirage, but rather an interactive environment that feels as real as any they’ve ever experienced. They can take books off of a shelf and learn a new magic spell, or peek around a bush to spy on an unsuspecting subject. When that item floats in front of their eyes, they’ll be able to grab it and manipulate it. They won’t be fumbling to take their glasses off, because those are the portal to the world in which they are immersed.

It is also important for developers to think of 3-D as more than just an added range of perspective. They need to start designing worlds which live and breathe, and place us in situations where intuition, not repetition, get us out of the tightest jam. And it will be this intuitive gameplay which will remove all barriers to video gaming. Kids won’t have to memorize the latest button combination to execute a certain move; they’ll be able to perform that move just as they would in real life, and have it reproduced exactly as intended.

The 3DS is just as important. It might not have the same level of immersion as the Playstation Move, or the sans-3-D motion capture of the Microsoft Kinect, but it will provide the same opportunity to reinvent video game playing as intuitive rather than repetitive. By manipulating assets within an environment possessing real depth, rather than on a flat plane with a perception of depth which requires suspension of disbelief, players can partake in activities as they would in real life. The stylus, as it had revolutionized gaming back in 2004, will continue to capture realistic and fluid player movements and controls in a way that button presses cannot.

Giving in to such immersion, the argument of whether violent actions in video games beget violent tendencies in real life is invigorated. As we saw with “Avatar depression” in individuals who lost themselves in James Cameron’s fictional world of Pandora, there could be the potential where reality takes on an entirely new meaning for some. However, there are many factors which all need to be addressed as 3-D gaming is propagated to the masses – and, interestingly, all exist for today’s video games. Stability of the individual’s mental state needs to be weighed first and foremost. Parents need to take responsibility for what games their children play. And video game publishers need to take responsibility for the content they peddle to children. Admittedly, we anticipate these three factors to exist going forward in a somewhat amplified state until the shock of introducing 3-D into such interactive entertainment settles into society.

We like the idea of 3-D gaming for our children, and we feel the benefits far outweigh the negatives. It will break down typical barriers and introduce kids to gaming earlier, and hopefully spawn new types of gameplay which teach logical solutions to realistic challenges.

So yes, we do need 3-D.