"...game over, man! Game over!"

(That fairly-famous line is said by Hudson, from the movie Aliens. Who doesn't love the 80's?)

While my media habits have certainly included movies, TV, animations, the Internet, books, and yes, even the handy pencil-and-paper medium, my greatest indulgence is in the realm of games. Video games, to be specific. I've been hooked on video games for as long as I can remember -- I drew the beginning of World 8-2 of Super Mario Bros. for a first grade project, and that was some years after first being in love with video games, no exaggeration. I can't imagine a future where I'm not loving video games. If it weren't for my lack of funds, I'd be indulging in virtually every gaming-related media I could grab. If you've read my previous post, you can take a guess about my obsession with things that go "blip-blip" (even if video games haven't really made those sort of noises since the Atari days). Most of my other media habits have stemmed from something related to video games. Even fictional writing, which could arguably be an equal or greater passion, flourished from my experiences on an online gaming forum. So let's stick with my interests in gaming, shall we?

Even in the layman's understanding of media, video games are a relatively new medium -- one that has only very recently been "taken seriously" (Translation: "Holy crap, people are making serious money out of these play-things! Guess we better take a look at them..."). The question, I ask myself, is where (or what) will these new medium head? Will it continue to be a medium that speaks to me, and in turn, I feel I can interact with, or will it stagnate and turn to little more than a bastardized film medium? "What's the difference?" you may ask. Well, a medium, in this context, is a means of communicating something from one person(s) to another person(s) through a certain technology. That medium can be targeted to a large or small number of people, it can engage a sense in high or low representation, and it can involve a high or low amount of participation. It is the element of participation -- high participation, in this case -- that significantly separates the video game medium from most other mediums. Some people may argue otherwise, believing firmly in technological determinism, and say that video games kills the imagination, and encourages things like violence in real life when presented with violence in the video game medium. My bias would say that, more than most other mediums, video games have the potential to be just the opposite.

What can I do to play my part in the gaming industry, economy, and culture, short of developing it myself? I can expand my knowledge in other media -- no one medium is an island, and my understanding of a medium's strengths and weaknesses, its past and present products, and its relation with video games will strengthen my own ability to understand and consume gaming as a medium of its own -- and I can use these other media to engage in a dialogue with others, to share my own insights about the potential of gaming as a medium and to gain their possible critiques on the gaming medium. For every "game over" that occurs in the development of the gaming medium, there is the ability to continue, to reset, to press on.