From Fad to Phenomenon
This is the story of how a whimsical invention of the 1960s helped spawn the computer industry as we know it. Video games have influenced the way children live and play, forever altered the entertainment industry, and even affected the way wars are fought. See how it all began and find out what it means for the future.



http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/index.html

Damn, I would have liked to see this. I'm sure they'll rerun it again.

I watched it... it was interesting, but very little I didn't already know. They discussed among other things how video games related to the Columbine shootings and whatnot. Alot of the people being interviewed were tards, but at least it was fair and balanced. It's worth catching if they run it again.

Agreed.

My $.02: I'm not the biggest gamer in the world, but even I would have wanted them to lean a bit more towards the Ken Burns approach and get more in depth on any of the topics/games.


It doesn't seem like it's re-airing in the next two weeks, according to the page I linked above, at least on my local PBS channels.

I enjoyed it, but it did seem to get off-track in places. And after mentioning within the first five minutes that half the population of the U.S. plays video games and that the average age of a video game player is 29, they spent most of the second half of the show primarily discussing how video games affect kids.

I did have to agree with a lot of the folks who asserted that the excessive violence prevalent in the current crop of video games is a crutch and a detriment, even in games that are otherwise brilliantly conceived and executed (the example used in the show are Doom 1-3 and GTA 3). For me, the gratuitous violence is such a turn off that I can't even play the games, despite their admittedly top notch design and gameplay.

I actually was very aggravated. It seemed like they mixed their history in parts. Sometimes, they'd talk about Nintendo creating a new game, Super Mario Bros, and most of the footage would be from SMB2 or SMW.

Don't know why...things like that aggravate me.