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Time To Stop Calling Them Games?
GamePolitics wonders aloud about our use of the term game to describe electronic entertainment. In the author's view, referring to videogames as 'games' is inhibiting their adoption by mainstream society (who relates gaming to children's activities). From the article: "Things have changed, of course. Video game content now runs the gamut from kid-friendly titles like Curious George and LEGO Star Wars to adult-themed offerings such as GTA San Andreas and Black to the highly socialized online communities of World of Warcraft and Second Life or the largely adult-populated casual game scene of Pogo. Over the years, gamers and game designers have recognized the artistic and expressive potential of videogames, along with their power to enlighten and entertain players from four to ninety-four. But there are also millions who missed that particular cultural bus."
Maybe I'm missing something....
http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_facts.php
The average player is 30, 43% are women, 18% are over 50 and revenues exceed that of movies.
How much more mainstream does gaming need to be?
I'm also wondering who thinks "games" are just for kids? Not many kids playing Bridge, Shuffleboard, Bingo, etc....
"Things have changed, of course. Book content now runs the gamut from kid-friendly titles like Curious George and The Ewok Adventure to adult-themed offerings such as Lolita and A Clockwork Orange to the highly socialized plays of Les Miserable and Romeo & Juliet or the largely adult-populated operas of Mozart. Over the years, books and writers have recognized the artistic and expressive potential of the written word, along with their power to enlighten and entertain readers from four to ninety-four. But there are also millions who missed that particular cultural bus."
Books are containers for written content.
Games are containers for interactive content.
I don't see the problem here other than to separate the "good" stuff from the "bad" stuff to help offset political restrictions.
playing on my Sony *Computer Entertainment System* for years even though it has barely any actual correlation to a computer. God forbid we play "games" I mean how gay is that?
It's a freakin game, folks. Stop trying to legitimize it and make it into an "industry" like Hollywood or the music industry... just have some damn fun playing a game. Instead of arguing over if it can display 1.2 million or 1.3 million polygons, and mortgaging your home for an SLi videocard setup so you can play at 120FPS (which your eyes can't even see nor your monitor/TV display) lets break out of this marketing bullshit and get back to fun games, that are both FUN and GAMES.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
We call them G@mes, if for no other reason than to confuse the ignorant.
You know who I mean. All those parents and commentators who open their yappers without ever having actually played one of the G@mes they're bitching about. We can insist on some stupid pronunciation just to make them sound really dumb when they're talking about them... and hopefully, this will cause them to stop talking about G@mes.
Alternate spellings:
Gam3
G4me
Ga/\/\e
and any combinations of the above
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Actually "Graphic Novel" came more to the front when Japanese Manga hit the US harder (read: when Tokyopop started spamming the market) and when it came to adults and non-anime people, their classification for it was "comics" or "japanese comics" (or japanese porn as my father used to put it) Fans would always come back hot-headed insisting they were either "Graphic Novels" or "Manga" (then spinning off a debate on how to pronounce Manga)
Names mean things to certain people. Everyone calls a Q-Tip a Q-Tip, not a cotton swab. Kleenex instead of tissue, it's all about what sticks in more people's minds and what becomes accepted in the mainstream. Games are games because people see them as children's entertainment. Thus when something like GTA hits the home, parents suddenly are shocked to learn that games actually encompess more than just Sesame Street Atari games, they include blood and violence, like TV, Movies, and the 6 o'clock local news.
As a GP reader, I read stories everyday of the wonderful world of idiots that seem to confuse reality with games, and the Jack Thompsons and Hillary Clintons that seem to think banning games and stiffling creative entertainment is a solution to the problem that this society has been on a downward spiral of morals since our grandparents generation. Parents simply don't give a damn about what their kids do, until they kill someone, then they point their fingers at those who aren't even responsible for their kids. All this society knows how to do is point fingers at everyone but themselves. I know, I'm 22, I used to think there was someone else to blame for everything (and there was in some cases). However I know the difference between reality and game, and when I do have children, they will not be playing games like GTA until they are mature enough to know those differences. I shook my head when my girlfriend would tell me about parents buying violent games for their little kids, and people bringing their 5 year olds to Underworld: Evolution. What kinda parenting is that?
If anything, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the government needs to start programs for educating people, not shutting people's eyes.
The terms "graphic novel" and "comic book" refer to both format and genre. If someone talks about a "comic book movie," chances are they mean X-Men or Superman and not Ghost World, Road to Perdition, or A History of Violence. This leads to ambiguity in just what the terms actually mean.
I can't bring myself to call anything made up of 22 pages stapled together a "graphic novel," no matter how serious, but a 150-page hardcover or trade paperback? Maybe. I'm more inclined if it's all one long story, especially if it's original. I guess I'm thinking of an individual comic book as a short story, and something like Sandman: The Kindly Ones (which took 13 issues to tell serialized) as novel-length.
That said, I've recently started looking at comics from the 1940s, and there were tons of these 100-page anthologies on newsprint. Those were unambiguously comic books. Same with the 200-300-page hardcover Archive editions DC puts out. Or the 500-page Marvel Essentials or DC's Showcase Presents lines.
Even for people who actually distinguish between "comic books" and "graphic novels," the line is fuzzy.
So let's not call chess, poker, golf, pool, darts, or any of the other things which adults play "games" either! Clearly, we must make up an entirely new word because a handful of people have a giant stick up their asses over the term GAME!