Are you proposing that more media outlets to disseminate “real world” news, or report from virtual places, like Second Life, about virtual things. Reuters does a bit of both.

I’m doing research on this stuff now; it strikes me as odd that real journalism can come out of fabricated environments. Your thoughts?

Most of the game-art (or rather art games) that I have experienced are simply awful games. Often because the people making them don’t understand (or don’t like) the structure of games.

There comes a point where you lose the play and gameplay of a game in order to try and make it serve what’s perceived culturally as a higher purpose. But the games already do achieve that (as well as, or perhaps because of, generating a massive amount of money).

I think the danger with the comparison is to confuse the media with the structure. That’s what Johnson’s book unpicks so well, I think.

The reason why terms like ’serious games’ don’t make sense is because they’re inherently contradictory. Business leaders like to call creativity ‘innovation’ and play ‘team building’ because it allows them to play without feeling ashamed of doing so. What so many social networks et al. are showing is that, actually, everyone likes to play a lot more than they care to admit. It’s a deeply rooted aspect of human nature.

To drop another book title in here, Pat Kane’s “The Play Ethic” critiques the industrial revolution work-ethic in this regard in great detail.

what i am trying to get across is that ‘game’ technology can be ‘gamed’ for that latter factually informative purpose. i have to use the term ‘game’ to get the point across, but what i am looking for doesn’t necessarily have to have a competitive or playful component to be interactive or engaging.

simulation, virtualization, serious games… all terms that are bandied about, but none quite capture the full potential of what i am trying to get across.

but i completely agree with you, games are seriously entertaining and engaging. and i believe good games do tell stories, over and over and over again, and they are different every time. because they are rooted in conflict, they inherently contain the stuff that is the core of all good stories and their analogies play out in infinite and unpredictable ways.

there is a reason why theater and ‘plays’ go hand in hand, or that we say we ‘play’ sports.

And Steven Johnson’s book IS excellent. Thanks for sharing.

The comparison you make with film is false. Film is a medium and it’s language is broadly developed to tell stories, regardless of whether they’re documentaries or fiction. Games are a structured in specific ways to make for good gameplay - videogames are just one medium in which these are played out. You don’t try and tell stories with chess, backgammon or tag, for example. It’s because videogames are both big business and played out in a time-based, screen-based form that it seems like they would be ripe for something more ’serious’. But the idea that they’re not serious, that they’re are just a diet of ‘candy’ buys into the falsehood that they’re not cognitively as stimulating as something like, well, stories or literature.

I’m not arguing anything new here, read Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good For You for an insightful analysis of this.

I’ve been on the road for most of the last two weeks, but will respond in greater length after I return home tomorrow. I apprecaite your thoughtfulness.

Amy Gahran

2. wondering if murdoch is shopping for an ad serving network, or if he has one already.

“IBS should be trying to do what Revver is trying to do. Is Murdoch there already?”

Wait, which part of Revver? User-uploaded video? A video ad network? (And what does Murdoch have to do with either?)