In the videogame biz, we tend to think about the 'next generation" as the forthcoming and inevitable wave of technology. PlayStation 3, Nintendo GameCubed, Xbox Next, whatever.

As a journalist who covers videogames, I can't help but see this unbelievable cultural momentum building up behind the next generation of adults--the early teens, the pre-teens and the kids of today.

Kids love to talk to me about videogames. I think that part of the reason is that they find a great novelty in talking to an adult who knows anything about games. But beneath that, I think that they get very excited about the idea of a grown-up who take this part of their life serious.

See, kids don't take videogames serious. But not in the same way that their parents tend to think of games as disposable pop culture. Kids seem to have a very natural understanding of games as the entertainment extension of the digital culture that surrounds them.

The mainstream has grown comfortable with the idea of digital culture as long as it is real-time satellite feeds from foreign wars, instant email traffic updates, digital recorded music swiped from the Internet, ubiquitous access to online porn and digital shows on the Tivo. Mainstream culture has successfully automated the digitization of the things they were doing well before the computer arrived in one form or another.

Kids, on the other hand, don't see the novelty in any of this. They've had cheap personal computers and global communications since they were born. They may not make a big deal of it, but deep down they despise the idea that somehow digital culture is interesting. It's like studying the ground you walk on. It's just a part of their formal universe.

So too with games. Sure they love them. But games are simply the entertaining extension of all the computer stuff that fills their worlds. These kids have never lived in a world with three major networks on TV and little else, with the idea that cartoons are something that run mainly on Saturday morning and not around the clock, that man might someday go to the moon or live in space, that a long distance phone call is a rare occasion or that a computer in the household meant that you were from outer space. In the modern American kid's world, talking with a pal in China via instant messaging, walking into a bookstore with more titles that the school library, eating food from a dozen cultures at the mall and carrying around every song they've ever loved on a device the size of their pocket is a standard part of life. No kid goes to school today and brags, "I played EverQuest ONLINE last night." It's got nothing to do with the games. They don't talk about it because of how common all of this has become.

Kids grow up. So, sooner or later, these attitudes will become mainstream. God knows what the net generation will find boring The futurists cannot keep up with rapid evolution of kid cool.

When the Next Generation grows up, videogames will not be unique in their world. They will not even be interesting. What will grab their attention will be specific games. Just like the modern American adult does not walk around bragging about having bought a book, from a bookstore! but rather tries to explain why some specific title they have read matters and why, so will the next generation drive quality in the videogame medium through their indifference toward the medium. McLuhan not withsatanding, the medium may be the message, but the message is the art that ultimately matters to the individual.

While the current generation and the previous generation look at games and either complain about their gameplay and graphics, or simply fret about the implied morals of killing pretend people in realistic ways, the next generation talks about why games matter to them. Our greatest living game critics are all under the ages of 14.

All game developers and researchers policymakers and parents would do well to listen to the listen to what the Next Generation has to say.