A little plug for the work over at Gamics.com. Looks like an interesting form of metamedia for the metamedia of videogames! -- David

For generations Comic books have captivated the imaginations of untold numbers of children and adults alike. Similarly Video Games have easily become the new arena of creativity and enjoyment for all ages. So it should come as no surprise that the next evolution of graphic storytelling would come with the seamless integration of these two mediums, hence the origin of Gamics! Gamics, or "game-icks", are GameComics which use game screenshots and comic book layout style to create something familiar yet completely original.

Nathan Ciprick, the founder of Gamics.com, has been creating Gamics for nearly two years now, and it all began as a Sunday afternoon hobby to showcase his love of LucasArts' MMO "Star Wars Galaxies". His epic ongoing Gamic called "Path to the Force" updates every week and is now over 150 pages long! The story chronicles the adventures of his Wookiee character E'nac as he travels the Galaxy finding peril at every turn.

Ciprick has created over a dozen different Gamics for games such as EverQuest 2, Grand Theft Auto 3 & Vice City, Matrix Online, Doom 3, and more. The site also welcomes reader submitted Gamics with several fan-created Gamics in regular rotation. Most recently Gamics has begun officially promoting games for Atari, starting with Eugen Systems upcoming game "Act of War".

With daily Gamic updates, a column/blog, top game news stories, and a very active Forum community Gamics is poised to become a break-out site, and a welcome charge of creativity in the ever-changing games industry.

Check out www.gamics.com today to see what you've been missing!

Among all the Felliniesque shenanigans of the current American presidential race, I suppose that there’s no sort of weirdness that is out of place. Still, I do think it’s odd how little attention the current race has given to critical digital issues of copyright, privacy and freedom of speech and of the relative silence of the videogame faithful on the topic of a preference for president.

Maybe we videogame nerds are too introspective and introverted to peek out from behind our monitors and televisions to notice that the something big is happening next week. And it’s probably too late to do much about it now anyway.

Still, in the eleventh hour, my conscious got the best of me and I posted a screed on the Denver Post Online site title Videogame Voter’s Guide. I’ve long said that the surface of videogame reflects a clear picture of the warped reality surrounding them. So, with that in mind, I’ve tried to provide a clear picture of the Republican and Democractic candidates cast in the image of the videogames that best represent them.

And for the record, I’m voting for Kerry. So should you.

In the Denver Post over the weekend, columnist Mark Kiszla wrote a piece about videogames and sports. The nut of his argument was this:

"The rules of sports fame in the USA have changed.

"The virtual reality of bytes and ballers has fundamentally altered the way kids fall in love with sports.

"The most direct connection between a boy's heart and the pros are the 'A' and 'X' buttons of a control pad.

"The fields of dreams for teens is no longer Yankee Stadium or Boston Garden, but the playing platforms of XBox or PS2."

Kiszla sees videogames as a gateway to sports. But I have to wonder if the opposite is the case, games are consuming sports. And all that will be left over time are the bones.

Over at Dungeons and Dreamers Brad pointed to an article about academic acceptance of video game studies.

It is interesting to see institutes of higher learning casting a doubtful eye on video games. Then again, the problem is likely much larger. As the following essay by my teenage friend Alec makes clear, gaming has a ways to go to reach general "acceptability." -- David

***

This story in Waterthread has spurred some very heated discussion.

If you're interested in the interplay between Virtual Worlds and the Real World, this event has some major ramifications.

See the link below.

http://www.waterthread.org/news/107474916112769.html

The short version is that a company that specializes in selling virtual money and items has been acquired for $US 10 million.

The revenues of this company are rumored to be in the range of $US250k per month.

E

Some context: I teach an online course at the University of Colorado, Denver on critical video game theory. As an extra credit assignment, I pointed students to a debate being held on campus between lawyer Jack Thompson (his site, an opponent of video game violence and the legal council in a number of cases against video game companies, and David Kushner, the author of "The Masters of Doom", a book about the rise of id software and their games, including Doom and Quake.

I was unable to attend the "Gamers versus Blamers" debate because I was at Level Up. But several of my students did and they filed informative and thoughtful reports.

Joel, one of my students, posted a very interesting and telling reaction to the debate on the course discussion boards. What was most interesting to me was that he was persuaded by Thompson in the debate, but dissuaded later by an exchange of email he had with Thompson later.

Joel agreed to let me report the whole exchange. So, what follows is his mail to Thompson, Thompson's reply and what Joel posted on the course boards. Read through the thread. I think Joel's comments at the end say it all.

In Denver lately, video games have been all over the papers. That's because there is an effort underway to legalize off-track gambling and other video gaming machines.

By any measure, these "video games" are in spirit and in fact actually video games. Unlike Doom or The Sims you can win money from them. But really, how different is a machine spewing quarters from a couple of pals betting on a game of Madden? What if the same two buddies bet on a game of Madden, then let the computer run the game--no skill involved.

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.

I asked a friend of mine to post a story on this site about what he thought about video games. This is his take. -- David

This is one tough-ass question. Frankly, i have no clue what I think about video games. I know they're cool, but thats not very descriptive, now is it?

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.