Interesting, isn't it, how videogames are often considered to be technology rather than plain old media, by newspapers and journos?
The BBC files its gaming news under Technology, despite videogames' cultural popularity and signficance. True, to file games under Entertainment would be to ignore their educational, political or other -al aspects, and the BBC's website doesn't have a subsection for Culture, or even Art(s), both of which might (what do you think?) be more appropriate.
The Guardian corrals together television, radio, digital media, publishing, advertising, marketing and PR for its annual Media 100 list - but leaves out videogames*. There's even a coupla bloggers in there. Its wonderful gamesblog is under blogs: games don't seem to be featured anywhere else on the site.
The Times puts Games & Puzzles under Arts & Ents, but videogames in Gadgets & Gaming (somehow they're related, thinks The Times) under Tech & Web - at the same time as announcing that we're all - all - soon to be gamers.
Should games be considered technology, like gadgets, or media, like websites or television? Course I'd say the latter but I think you could have predicted that...
(*Thanks to Matt for pointing this out today!)
Coincidentally, I was in Boston yesterday successfully convincing a group of teachers that games are just literature, stories to be read or, in the case of some lucky students, written. They nodded. They understood. They played.
Tomorrow I've got to convince the other 900 attendees in my keynote. Wish me luck (and thanks for the "We're all gamers" link).
Posted by: Ewan McIntosh | July 15, 2008 at 15:54
This is a major problem isn't it? The fact is really, these publications don't put nearly as much time into games as they do film or books in any case.
The Guardian is slightly better then the BBC at least, only slightly however.
I'd say that games are entertainment (or art at least, as much as films are). The problem is this won't change very fast. And without any decent criticism or really and decent reporting in the biased advertising-run game mags and sites, we're between a rock and a hard place eh?
Glad someone else noticed at least.
Posted by: Andrew | July 20, 2008 at 18:35