I found a nifty article on Gamasutra’s new sister site Serious Games Source. It compares video games to the early days of television: flooded with advertisements and valueless dreck, a “vast wasteland,” if you will. From the article:
Unlike television, the meteoric rise of computer and video games over the past decade has gone largely unnoticed except by the digiteratti and cultural anthropologists cruising web zines and blogs. This may be because games are not a technology per se, but applications that slip into our lives on the backs of existing technologies, from computers, to televisions and cell phones. They are less hardware and more software. Like many mass culture phenomena, games are understood more on the basis of prevailing myths than reality. Few people realize that the average gamer is 30 years old, that over 40 percent are female, and that most adult gamers have been playing games for 12 years.
One reason myths shape public perceptions is because few universities have seen computer games as worthy of serious academic study, robbing the discourse around games of robust data on their use characteristics, effects, and potential value. There is, of course, the annual Congressional attack on the game world and its denizens, calling for more control of violent games and, like our TV-addicted forebearers, warning of dire consequences to mind and family. Politicians have conveniently made computer games a target of derision rather than a pedagogical ally or tool for public engagement.
Should there be a Corporation for Public Gaming, akin to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? The article is a great read. go check it out.