game on!

De the este artículo the Economist:

Click to buy from Amazon.com: “Everything Bad is Good for You”, by Steven Johnson (Amazon.co.uk); “Got Game”, by John Beck and Mitchell Wade (Amazon.co.uk).



Screenshots of the sexual content hidden in “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” are available online. Mrs Clinton has proposed legislation to better regulate the gaming industry. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will launch new consoles in the coming months. “Narc” and “25 to Life” have upset politicans. “Asheron’s Call 2” is a MMORPG. “Black & White” and “Halo 2” are morally complex. Games used for educational purposes include “Sim City” and “Rollercoaster Tycoon”. Becta announces Tim Rylands's award for using “Myst” to improve students’ English. Dmitri Williams posts his paper. See also games2train.



Del artículo:

Another analogy can be made between games and music—specifically, with the emergence of rock and roll in the 1950s. Like games today, it was a new art form that was condemned for encouraging bad behaviour among young people. Some records were banned from the radio, and others had their lyrics changed. Politicians called for laws banning the sending of offending records by post. But now the post-war generation has grown up, rock and roll is considered to be harmless. Rap music, or gaming, is under attack instead. “There's always this pattern,” says Mr Williams of the University of Illinois. “Old stuff is respected, and new stuff is junk.” Novels, he points out, were once considered too lowbrow to be studied at university. Eventually the professors who believed this retired. Novels are now regarded as literature. “Once a generation has its perception, it is pretty much set,” says Mr Williams. “What happens is that they die.”

Like rock and roll in the 1950s, games have been accepted by the young and largely rejected by the old. Once the young are old, and the old are dead, games will be regarded as just another medium and the debate will have moved on. Critics of gaming do not just have the facts against them; they have history against them, too. “Thirty years from now, we'll be arguing about holograms, or something,” says Mr Williams.