Video and computer games are also powerful ways to trace the distinctive flows and possibilities of modern global cultureBut gaming cultures are sometimes intensely national and local: boardgames in contemporary Germany, MMOGs in South KoreaBurnout 3 and Katamari Damacy strike me as a pretty good test bed for playing around with these questions with regard to gamesIt also raises some interesting non-design problems.  

Both games tend to appeal to a wide cross-section of the audience for video games

They both sit on a very simple conceptual foundation, without much complexity in the interface of their gameplay or much referent to video games as a medium or other genres of popular cultureEven someone who had little familiarity with console games or video games as a whole could probably learn to play (and enjoy) both games in a relatively short timeIt looks to me as if it would discourage RMT, for example, because investments won't necessarily be seen as sufficiently long-termThe truth is World of Warcraft Gold doesn't HAVE to take a long time to get, especially in the higher levelsBuy WOW Gold here, and then enjoy your excited WoW life! Warhammer Online Goldwill keep your high powerOn the other hand, if RMTers persuade the courts that people own what their characters own, the whole concept of a purge might be threatened

Other kinds of (creative) human activity vanish from its radar screen

This is an argument that forms part of a chapter I've written for a volume I'm co-editing  with Sandra Braman (Command Lines) that is currently under review, and there the specific example is Second Life and the challenges that the varieties of user content therein make to the multiple ideas about content held by the different teams within Linden LabBut GDC led me to see this claim as more applicable here as wellThey looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at usIt was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even strangerSomeone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted pointsIan made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic researchWhile I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developersAnd there are huge gaps in what we don't knowWhere is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from itI hope the audience did as well