Online Gaming

[rffrydr]

Though it's true Armani-suited hollywood agents have been flying north to sign games and gamers and, amazingly, rights are being withheld because movies tie-ins might jeopardize the "boxoffice" of the game itself, and game revenues are surpassing annual ticket sales, movies won't be replaced by games. Why? Movies aren't only, or even mainly, about "entertainment."

Besides being great for dates movies are a general social experience. We sit in the dark but we are not by ourselves. And how much are we guided by audience particaption or, how flat is a movie in an empty theatre! But what a movie is is what it leaves us with--those that do. And that is a MORAL experence. We try scenarios on and we watch them unfold. And we guage our reactions as we ourselves may have reacted. Movies have a well defined beginning, middle and end and, like the Great Book, are Instructive.

Funny, though structure might be the sure provence of games, online gaming (Microsoft final assault on digital piracy) is open-ended, like life--precisely what we go to a movie to escape!

[HenryTo]

Japan taps the female gaming market:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-20/samurai-romances-draw-japanese-women-to-video-dating-games-from-gree-tech.html

[HenryTo]

Zynga's CityVille on Facebook draws 100 million active users in its first month:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20028436-17.html