Five more big events from the Gamesblog year...
Film Critic accidentally starts 'are videogames art?' debate In early December I posted about Roger Ebert's review of the Doom movie (Film critic dismisses videogames), in which he stated that he had no intention of finding out more about the source material, because videogames were an inferior form of entertainment compared to movies or books. Naturally, this provoked a lengthy, interesting, but tragically unresolved 'games as art' debate. I suspect it won't be the last.
Emotion in Games Back in september, Aleks posted on a theory put forward by EA Studio boss Neil Young at the Tokyo Game Show: "The thesis was that games, in order to become truly mainstream media, must succeed in making players cry". Quickly, emotional readers were relating their most tearful gaming moments with the Final Fantasy titles cropping up time and time again. As if on cue, a company named Bowen Research then released the results of a study into emotion in games (More news on weepy gamers). It was discovered that, scientifically, the death of Aeris in Final Fantasy VII was the most blub-inducing game moment ever. Personally, I cried more when I found out about 50 Cent: Bulletproof...
Massively multiplayer online weirdness The MMORPG genre provided a deep and really quite scary well of human interest stories throughout the year. In June, Aleks interviewed David Storey, the chap who purchased a piece of virtual land in the game Project Entropia for $26,500. This was not the only tale from the bizarre new virtual economy - back in March we also heard of a Romanian sweatshop where youngsters were paid a pittance to work up powerful MMORPG characters who could then be sold to lazy players.
From MMOG finance to MMOG murder, summer saw the story of Chinese gamer, Qui Chengwei, who received a life sentence for murdering a fellow Legend of Mir 3 player - the victim had borrowed then sold Chengwei's powerful virtual sword. World of Warcraft was by far the most talked about MMOG of the year, however, with its diseases, sex offers and domestic breakdowns. Who can possibly guess what 2006 has in store...
Adverts in games The burgeoning world of in-game advertising split Gamesblog readers throughout the year - some viewing it as the evil commoditisation of virtual worlds, others a necessary element of environmental realism. Aleks brought the subject up in April (Adverts are the new music), and earlier this month I blogged about a report co-sponsored by Activision which claimed that people definitely really love in-game ads. Whether we like it or not, the fact is, there's money to be made in virtual ad-space these days.
Xbox 360 launch The next-generation was heralded in on a tidal wave of salty hype, featuring surreptitiously photographed hardware, MTV specials and ostentatious E3 conferences. Then, finally, Greg got his hands on one. He then switched it off for long enough to comment on the UK and Japanese launches. Since then we've had plenty to talk about (power usage, eBay sales, etc), but not too many must-have games to play. Oh well, you can't have everything.
