After reporting on the fun and games at last weeks RNC in New York, PBS is turning their sites on another breed of fun: video games.
Terranova via Slashdot Games tuned me into The Video Game Revolution, set to air this Wednesday at 9pm on PBS stations across the US and seeping across the border to Canada (one American cultural import I am happy to receive.)
The two hour program covers the history, evolution and cultural impact of video games on a generation of people raised popping quarters into machines to blast space invaders.
Video games? Thats what spotty teen males wearing black t-shirts do in the basement, right?
Wrong. What that half of America might not know is that the other half of America is regularly playing video games. And its not just kids any more. The average video game player ? or gamer ? is 30 years old. That gamer isnt feeding quarters into an arcade machine, either. He (and increasingly, she) is playing on a home computer, having adventures under a different name and identity in an eternally existing cyberworld full of danger, romance, and thousands of other people pretending to be somebody else.
If this sounds like you (and theres no denying that it doesnt) then mark Wednesday at 9pm on your calendar. In the meantime check out the shows great website here.
Related: If you want to learn about the positive effects of video games on kids, then read my Digital Literacy article in Septembers Todays Parent magazine.
