A Tree Falling in the Forest

The New York Times is the official newspaper of record of the United States. If I knew how to make an underline in blogger you would see this by the underline under the name The New York Times. In the second grade I learned it is the only newspaper title I am supposed to underline in a sentence. This past Sunday the Magazine's cover story was about The Beatles: Rock Band , and it was the greatest game coverage I have ever seen. For the first time, not a single one of the thousand words disparaged gamers, the game's creator was given credit and people like Paul McCartney explained to about 2 million mainstream readers, and a bunch more on line, why they would really like the game. The article also explained how the game is actually contributing to the music business and consumers were willing to pay twice as much for the twice as many copies of Motley Crue's latest release - "twice" is of course relative and not absolute. All in all, a game with mainstream...

In America we have a great tradition of putting things on a high enough pedestal to cause serious damage when we knock them off. We build everyone from politicians to athletes into heroes and then celebrate the inevitable indiscretion with excessive coverage in our 24 hour news cycle. Celebrities are followed and pestered until they slip and the media highlights box office failure more readily than the hits. As an industry, we enjoyed the ride to the top, so I guess we must hold on for the ride back down. For the past year the media trumpeted the video game business as the only thriving business during the world wide recession. We were the lucky ones, people still wanted to play games and we were the beneficiaries. No one seemed to mention the publishers were all still suffering losses associated with the console shift and games were late, the focused on aggregate numbers. Lucky us. But then, last week, we learned misery loves company. The coverage shifted to the fall of...