Op-Ed

One of the major responsibilities a debate moderator has (other than counting how many times someone says "strategery") is posing interesting and bombastic questions to the panel.

With that in mind, I wanted to reach out to members of The Escapist Forum for questions they might want to ask about the future - and present - of virtual economies.

Where some people have beauty salons or bars, though, gamers have virtual worlds. IRC, instant messaging and message boards are all something most internet users can understand, but there's nothing quite like hanging around in-game to gain a true appreciation for the human need for interaction.

Poor Microsoft. They've been run through the ringer lately. Most recently, they announced that every single Xbox 360 sold has the same defect that can cause the unit to overheat and malfunction, rendering it permanently unusable.

In 2006, Electronic Arts generated nearly $3 billion in revenue, accounting for roughly one-third of the entire gaming industry. With that in mind, a world without EA isn't easy to fathom. But 2007 has been less stellar for the company, with Activision exceeding EA's revenue for the first half of the year on the back of Guitar Hero and movie tie-ins. This draws a comparison to General Motors, which also this year fell from its long perch as a defining industry leader.

This month's target of internet invective is the Resident Evil 5 trailer. This one has been under a lot of scrutiny of late, mainly because, for the first time ever, the antagonists of a videogame are poor black villagers (never mind that they've been zombified, they're still poor black villagers), and the protagonist is white. For some folks, this is unacceptable, and they see no way to do anything about it. Cue: moral outrage.

Due to popular demand, we're going to give a sort of poetry circle / book club thing a try. Vishnu help us.

The game for August is Psychonauts, the wacky, but surprisingly deep platformer by Doublefine. This one got a lot of critical acclaim, but tanked at retail. Which means its right up our alley.

Check out Lara Crigger's fantastic article on the game.

The problem is that, at least here in America, Ebert is right. As a result of social pressures, gaming is not an art form in the United States. It's not art in Britain or Germany or Australia. Maybe it's art in France; they've given Miyamoto medals, after all. But around the world, gaming is restricted, hemmed in and censored by organizations thinking of the children so we don't have to.

This is the kind of song that made Guitar Hero the dream machine it is today. Wailing solos, long slides and furious fretwork ... If we could do these things in real life, we'd be rock stars. But playing a real guitar is hard. And the graphics aren't as good. And, let's face it, not everyone is cut out for life in the fast lane. Sure life is sweeter when you're on the bus, but that bus never stops, and sometimes, you just want to sit at home on the couch and eat Chinese food, while taking five-minute-at-a-time journeys down the road of rock. And for those times, "Round and Round" will do nicely.

Team Humidor, the faithful editors of The Escapist, has been sweating for weeks over what we hope will be the best collection of issues about games and gaming yet.

I think the answer lies in the community-building nature of our pastime. Gamers have invested their lives into a hobby that, unlike most others, does not weaken its grip in the rocky wasteland of adolescence and remains a calling into adulthood. Gaming is a link not only to our past, but as a high-tech industry, it embraces the technology that can link us together.

I'm a big sports fan - I won't lie. I watch them, I play them and I read about them. A lot of sites run what are called "power rankings," a ranking of every team in a league, which evaluates each team's chance at winning a championship relative to everyone else. As a season goes on, the power rankings change as injuries, trades and reality enters into the mix. And I thought, "Hey, the game industry is pretty competitive. Why don't we have something like this?"

And lo, The Escapist Power Rankings were born. Below, you'll find a list of 20 of the most significant players in the industry, along with five cellar-dwellers.

Removing a story from its natural medium, in many cases, is a waste of a perfectly good story. Though there are a few exceptions, in general, ripping a story from its original format tarnishes the experience. Gamers may know this lesson even better than the most cynical book lover. Just the same, it seems like a videogame is optioned for a movie adaptation every other week. This past Tuesday's showing of a live action snippet of a possible Halo movie did nothing to alleviate my frustration; though it was well put together, it had the ambiance of a fan-film set in the world of the Alien movies.

That E3 has fundamentally changed hasn't quite sunk in yet. It's part of the reason I didn't go this year, because I hadn't accepted the certainty of change. It's difficult not to reflect on previous shows where one would quickly lose track of all the new games. Suddenly we have been thrust from the world where LucasArts alone might announce six games at E3 to a scenario where Wii Fit and Scene It! are worth mentioning at major press conferences.

Veterans of decades of E3s at the LACC can no longer dangle their attendance badges like ears collected from Southwest border raids, signaling to all their superiority. At this point, there isn't a single soul who's yet navigated the gauntlet of ballrooms, boardwalks and shuttle buses awaiting us in Santa Monica, and this is as good as it is bad.

On the good side, we'll probably score a number of impromptu meetings with Important Persons, just by happening to be near their conference rooms when some poor sod scheduled himself to be there immediately following his previous meeting six hotels away and didn't make it. On the bad side, we're just as likely to be that poor sod.

I think it's extremely laudable that developers are willing to take on issues like religion, politics and science. Where I take issue, though, is central to the medium: choice. In a movie or a book, we need to rely on the content to provide us with multiple viewpoints. If a film wants to ram a single interpretation down our throats, our only real alternative is leaving the room.