Jon Radoff of CEO gamerDNA (and of Legends of Future Past, the first commercial MMORPG in 1992) posted a rather inspiring post on his blog entitled, “Six Wonderful Things about Games“. This really hits home for me and reminds us all that gaming is an important part of modern society and has the power to do much good, in spite of some of the negative publicity it occasionally gets.
Jon begins:
Games are a wonderful medium. Like music, literature, film and theatre, games do a great deal to help make life worth living. In Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde said, “All art is quite useless.” He said this to illustrate that yes, art has little to no practical value. That does not mean that art is of no benefit to anyone of course! For me, the same argument can be applied to games, as their entertainment value is enough to justify their existence.
He then continues to speak more about the positive aspects of gaming and how it transforms society and humanity for the better is stands as its own artform. It’s well worth reading and I’m certain that the comments will be excellent as well.
(Disclosure: I worked for gamerDNA in 2008 under Jon, but post this because I count him as a friend and value his writing, vision and opinion in the game industry- not due to any financial obligation or compensation.)
