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The New Reality of Gaming 122

Hugh Pickens writes "Video games used to be about fighting aliens and rescuing princesses, writes Rohin Dharmakumar in Forbes, but the most popular games today have you tilling your farm, hiring waiting staff and devising menus for your restaurant or taking your pets out for walks while maintaining cordial relations with the neighbors. 'Reality, it would seem, is the new escapism.' Video games of the pre-social network era were mostly played by boys or young men but 'now the core audience of social network games are girls and young women,' says Alok Kejriwal, founder and CEO of games2win, an online gaming company. The tipping point in the US came in 2008 when women outnumbered men on the Internet. Combined with millions of parents and grandparents who're new to the Internet, the traditional face of the gamer is changing from that of a 25-year-old male to a band stretching from 16 to 40 years comprising men and women in almost equal numbers, says Sebastien de Halleux, one of the co-founders of Playfish, who predicts that someone is going to create a social game very shortly that pulls in a billion dollars a year. Gaming for this new set of players is less about breathtaking graphics, pulsating sound or edge-of-the-seat action and more about strengthening existing real world relations through frequent casual gaming. 'Think of these games as a sandbox where everybody has the same tools, yet everyone achieves different results,' says de Halleux."

Comment Re:As they should be. (Score 1) 628

In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.

Really, did _you_ vote on it, will your vote be reaffirmed every generation or so to ensure its still what the people want ?

Perhaps you should have said, a previous generation let the powers that be keep secrets from everyone, and now we cant get them to give up their power.

This argument doesn't hold much water. Should every law in a democratic society be renewed every few years? I agree there may be an argument for more openness, but secrecy in some areas is and will always be important. Furthermore, as the first post in the thread stated, this leak is not being chosen democratically, either. Unilateral action by an individual or small group of individuals is not necessarily in there interest of the people. Also you claim "we cant get them to give up their power." Have you tried? When was the last time you wrote to your representatives urging them to press for legislation declassifying reams of diplomatic documents?

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