I think the best way to get gamers to play games cross platform is to design games that are meant to be played differently on different platforms. Make an interface and character type that works better with a console controller and the players with the console controllers will excel in that role. I've tried playing games like Assassin's creed with both interfaces and while both work, the analogue sticks allow for better maneuverability. Yes, I can aim far more accurately with a mouse. Yes, the keyboard works great for widely varied input. But when it comes to dancing through a hail of rockets, or driving, or flying, the analogue stick just works better IMHO. I think the only way we're going to see cross platform games really pick up is to have roles that suit the various platforms better. Have the PC gamers playing the ranged combat characters and the console gamers playing the melee combat characters and I think you'll find it much easier to balance the game play.

Without it all my favorite activities go out the window.

Near as I can tell, the argument is over the definition of the line between what is and isn't art. Art must be something that is created by a mind. Art must be something that can sensed (seen, heard, felt, etc.). Art is not bound to any particular medium. Yet we're missing something if we have people arguing over whether video games are art or not. I don't think anyone would argue that video games don't contain art. Some of them contain vast amounts of art, far more than is in a movie or a book. But is the video game itself art? It has art in it, but is it art itself? Perhaps what critics like Ebert are trying, and failing, to communicate is that while video games can have the best art within them, they have not yet become art in and of themselves. They think there's something within the whole of the arrangement that is a video game that makes it not art. It seems to me that Ebert thinks it has something to do with the rules by which a game is played. Perhaps it's that a game can be viewed in a context where the aim is not to experience something, but to complete a task? Then again, perhaps art is just in the eye of the beholder.

I would like to think that by the time I'm dead they can just grab a few tissue samples to add to a genetics database and the rest could be refurbished for those who need replacement parts.

Hey, if they include it on most multiple choice forms...