Here's the interesting article of the day. ArsTechnica has a bit called "The History of Gaming" which attempts to encompass... the history of gaming. It's filled with wacky historic pictures starting back in the late 50's and moving towards today... It's all happy fun time looking at the history until they get in to the "grim" predictions of the future of gaming the way things are looking lately.

Despite the popularity coupled with games such as Final Fantasy and The Sims, computer gaming will pay a dastardly price for associating itself with this kind of melodrama and escape.  In the 1980s, both developers and gamers knew well what a farce most games were.  Today, developers and gamers are no longer equally acknowledging the fantasy entailed in their games.  The primary elements of games have remained the same all these years.  It used to be the technology that was changed.  Now it's the sales pitch.  With computers out of their limited demographic of the early 1980s, publishers are now pushing their products with a different angle to take advantage of the general public.  When most gamers were upper-class intelligentsia, developers had to use intelligence and wit to succeed.   Now that a wider range of people are playing, the fulcrum is different. 

Yeah... what he said!