Stressing that games can be culture – this is Germany after all and without having been elevated into the lofty realms of culture no new technology is acceptable – he uttered the vision of a co-existence of classical German high culture (as in the explicitly mentioned Goethe) and the new medium of digital games – not without having mentioned that the “non-academically inclined” milieus spend a proportionately higher part of their day in front of the computer. Here we go again…

(It did not become clear if this includes internet use as well; to be fair he also mentioned that there’s not necessarily a causal relationship between underachievement and time spend with computers – which is pretty much a no-brainer as it of course mainly depends on the use one puts it to. Also: When asked what amount of time he considers appropriate to spend time with computers his answer was “30 minutes to an hour” causing pretty much everyone to break out in laughter…)

Emphasis mine.

[Malte Behrmann, lobbyist and chairperson of the German and European game developers associations] explained to me that in the European Union one just can’t randomly subsidize a branch of industry but that certain criteria have to be fulfilled to qualify for grants – one being the “cultural exception”, the reason why he was busy trying to frame games as culture to achieve said subsidies. It can be seen that in France this approach was obviously successful.

I find it strange to imagine a point of view where computer games are not culture. In fact, I find it strange to imagine a point of view where computer games are not art, or culture, or a storytelling medium. I mean… isn’t it obvious? Discussing this was fun in the 90s. The early 90s.

But it also helped to widen the acceptance of digital games in Germany as it was used to counter the maddening “Killerspiel” discourse. As I told Malte this was probably the best action plan they could come up with. The thing is: German politicians for the most part are all members of what could be called a high-level milieu (successors of the classical educated bourgeoisie) whose main form of distinction is “anti-barbarian”, one of the main reasons why digital games with violent content matter are vigorously rejected. The opposite of “barbarian” is of course culture, a concept that perfectly works for these people’s self-legitimation resulting in the heightened acceptance of the new medium.

The political class… brr.

I’m talking to you, you self-righteous politicians and newspaper columnists, you relics who beat on computer games: you’ve already lost. Enjoy your carping while you can, because tomorrow you’re gone.

According to the UK Statistics Authority, the median age of the UK population is 39. Half the people who live here were born in 1969 or later. The BBC microcomputer was released in 1981, when those 1969ers were 12. It was ubiquitous in schools; it introduced a generation to computers. It introduced a generation to computer games.

Half the UK population has grown up playing computer games. They aren’t addicted, they aren’t psychopathic killers, and they resent those boneheads – that’s you – who imply that they are addicted and are psychopathic killers.

Next year, that 1969 will be 1970; the year after, it’ll be 1971.

Dwell on this, you smug, out-of-touch, proud-to-be-innumerate fossils: half the UK population thinks games are fun and cool, and you don’t. Those born in 1990 get the vote this year.

It’s a fun read.

EA is doing the sensible thing and is pointing out Fox’s reporting inaccuracies in public, and in no uncertain terms. I don’t know how effective it will be, but still, it’s a great letter.

Games boast ever richer and more realistic graphics, but this has actually inhibited their artistic growth. The ability to convincingly render any scene or environment has seduced game designers into thinking of visual features as the essence of the gaming experience.

[...]

If games are to become more than mere entertainment, they will need to use the fundamentals of gameplay — giving players challenges to work through and choices to make — in entirely new ways. The formula followed by virtually all games is a steady progression toward victory: you accomplish tasks until you win. Halo 3, for all its flawless polish, does not aspire to anything more. It does not succeed as a work of art because it does not even try.

None of this should be news to anyone inside the industry. The real news is that there is a decent article about games as an art form in the New York Times.

(Via Grand Text Auto.)

A gaming convention in Iraq, how cool. Via Penny Arcade.

VG Cats – Koopa!

Best 300 parody so far.

Cool, and as Robin mentioned, cool because Will makes very un-Hollywood-ish games (or perhaps this is why he got the award?). It also helps that some of the other Very Well Known game designers are not American, I guess…

• Thad exposes the truth behind the PS3 concept graphic that can be found on many respectable sites.
• How to use a hacked Xbox as a media center.
• Have you ever come across something about ‘gaming’ only to find out it was about ‘gambling’? Wired has an article about people who design gambling videogames for casinos.
• You may already have heard of this: Underage prostitution for real money in The Sims Online, and subsequent censorship by EA.
  Here’s an interview with one of the evildoers. More commentary and meta-commentary can be found on Terra Nova. Update: Another interview.
• Tweaking NPC AI – in Lord Of The Rings.
• I still love weird peripherals. And I think there may be a future for these things. Interoperability + Personalisation + Branding.
• Augmented reality Quake. Augmented reality rules – it just seems like the way to go. I was brainstorming about things like this back at Kalisto, when we had a patent on the use of live data from sports events.
• EA Canada is hiring – away from Radical Entertainment, as it happens. After Ubisoft Montreal, now this.
• Several companies are now doing things with the combination of Gamecube and Gameboy.

(From all over the place.)