Fun Inc.: Why games are the 21st Century’s most serious business

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‘Tom Chatfield’s Fun Inc. is the most elegant and comprehensive defence of the status of computer games in our culture I have read, as well as a helpful compendium of research … The numbers surrounding the sector are certainly thudding. By the end of 2008, annual sales of video games – not including consoles or devices – was $40 billion, comfortably outstripping the movie business. In the same year, Nintendo’s employees were more profitable per head than Google’s. The sheer pervasiveness of game experience – 99 per cent of teenage boys and 94 per cent of teenage girls having played a video game – means that instant naffness falls upon those who express a musty disdain for the medium. In fact, as Fun Inc. elegantly explains, computer game-playing has a very strong claim to be one of the most vital test-beds for intellectual enquiry.’Independent

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