Time to take games seriously

Steven Johnson, the guy who wrote Everything Bad is Good for You, has written an interesting piece in Guardian Unlimited on why games needs to be taken seriously. We know the economic benefits of having a thriving games industry, but little has been said on the social benefits and relevance of games. It's time to start taking games seriously.

...if games tend to lack storytelling prowess, it doesn't necessarily follow that they lack social relevance. All the complex simulation games on the market - from The Sims, to Civilization, to SimCity, to Black & White - are, in effect, animated theories of how a given society works, whether it is ancient Rome or a modern metropolis. You learn the theory by playing. One of the defining attributes of Grand Theft Auto that has been chronically ignored by critics is how explicitly the game plays as a satire of American inner-city culture - or, more precisely, suburban America's nightmare of inner-city culture. But that satire emerges as much out of the environment of the game - the hilarious radio pseudo-soundtrack, the snippets of dialogue you overhear in the world - as it does from the story that unfolds as you play.

All of this - the economic strength of the gaming industry, the complexity of the games themselves, and their growing relevance as a platform for social commentary - adds up to one inevitable conclusion: ignoring games means ignoring one of the most interesting and innovative cultural forms of our time - not unlike writing off Hollywood in the era of Citizen Kane and Gilda.