New data from industry analysts raises questions about the future of the PC game market.

NPD Techworld issued a press release this week that noted:

“PC games sales over the first ten months of 2002 reached $956 million compared with $945 million during the first ten months of 2001. Between January and October of 2002, 41.6 million units of PC games were sold compared with 44.4 million during the same period the year prior.”

This equates to a 1.2 percent increase in revenue and 6.3 percent decline in the number of games sold.

"Today, videogames are poised to advance - technically, artistically, commercially - in ways that could make them to the present century what films were to the last: emotionally engrossing, visually stunning, socailly influential expressions that capture and inform the spirit of the times."

--Zev Borow, Wired Jan. 2003, p 104

One barrier I can see to the long-term acceptance of video games as a serious art form is the short-life cycles of games. Unlike books, or even movies, games tend to live the brief life of a commercial product. For most games, that period of relevance is usually less than a year. Even for a hit game, after a couple of years, it falls into a sort of nostalgia netherworld.

In order for people to take games more seriously the industry needs to take itself more seriously. Before politicians, parents and pundits will stop for a moment and think about electronic entertainment as a viable art form for the 21st Century, we need to start showing by example what taking games seriously is all about.

On the academic front, taking games seriously means a lot of things--research, contemplation, academic publishing and more. At the heart of every academic endeavor is a well-formed bibliography. One of the goals of this site is to compile a comprehensive, or as comprehensive as possible, bibliography of cites relating to the theory, history, criticism and social thought on games.

On the academic front, taking games seriously means a lot of things--research, contemplateion, academic publishing and more. At the heart of every academic endevour is a well-formed bibliogrphy. One of the goals of this site is to complile a comprehensive, or as compreshensive as posisble, bibliogrpahy of sites relating to the theory, history, criticism and social thought on games.

Questions around ethics and morality of gaming often are raised around the games themselves. But perhaps the better direction is to point the question directly at the people the make games:

Do video game developers have ethical responsibilities when building games?

While a complex issue, some interesting themes and solutions to this question emerged through the discussion.

Some questions don't get answers simply because no one thinks to ask them.

Take one of the central questions of video games--are they or can they be consider a form of art?

The question goes unasked most of the time for a fairly simple reason: If video games can be considered art, then asking and answering the question may not appear to provide a lot of value. If games are not art, then why waste the time trying to show that a form of leisure is more than just a way to kill time? if they are art, why bother to try and prove it?

Actually, I think both of these questions are worth answering. And like a lot of the better questions you can ask, just explaining why the question matters takes some time before you can ever set off to actually start providing any answers.