It’s almost 2010 and it would be great if this could be the year that the games industry finally becomes widely accepted as mainstream entertainment.
The advent of the Wii and the “casual” gaming scene is helping to shed the “games are for teenage boys” image but it would be even better if they were considered a medium of entertainment and not just “toys”.
Another promising sign is yet another report that games are outselling movies by the Daily Telegraph (via. the Computer and Video Games site). (Hopefully generating a shedload of tax revenue deems them worthy of being taken seriously!)
Perhaps the best indication yet that games are being accepted is the inclusion of games creators in the new years honours list as reported by the BBC. The two brothers behind the Championship Manager series were given MBE’s “in recognition for their services to the UK’s computer games industry”. I kid you not!
It’s not often that Microsoft gives you the opportunity to earn cold, hard gamerscore for nowt. But if you don’t mind installing the Games for Windows LIVE client from http://www.microsoft.com/games/en-us/live/Pages/livejoin.aspx you can also get Tinker for absolutely nothing which includes 200 points worth of achievements.
Tinker is an isometric 3D style puzzle game which you’ve probably seem a hundred clones of previously but it’s polished, good fun and worth a download.
By the way, the system requirements for Tinker imply that it needs a 3GHz processor and a Geforce 6600/ATI 1300 graphics card… My own system is substantially below that specification and it runs fine!
