American is the world’s greatest video gaming nation, and it should be proud of this status. It dominates globally in terms of the value of this market, but also in the sophistication of its audience and the quality of its industry. It’s thanks to games, in large part, that I have got t know American as I do. Or, to be more precise, it’s thanks to games that I have got to know certain Americans. I am far from alone this. The greatest value and interest of any medium is always the human experiences it enables, not the machinery in which it encodes them. And, at their best, electronic games can show us at our best: creatively, socially, politically, and intellectually.
We need to take this world “gamers” and throw it away, together with all those other generalizations that open up no debate and that mask the future under vague hopes and wild fears. We need talk seriously, now, about how to get the best out of games, where the worst really lies, and what the games we play can tell us about ourselves and our future. The news may not all be good. But we cannot afford to ignore it.