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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Games BAFTA Guru: Will Wright Says Smart Things About Game Addiction

Posted by Earnest "Nex" Cavalli on Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 2:36 PM

Tired of old people railing against the dangers of videogame addiction? Do you roll your eyes every time a middle-aged mother of three likens Halo to heroin? Does the sight of Joe Lieberman make you ball up your fists involuntarily?

While we here at The Portland Mercury cannot condone any sort of Senatorial fisticuffs, we do condone striking back at these people with rapier wit. Unless you're Oscar Wilde, no one ever expects that.

To help you in defense of your chosen hobby, I offer the following video. That's SimCity creator (and all-around geek demigod) Will Wright lecturing as part of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' BAFTA Guru program. Think of it as something similar to the TED lecture series, only instead of collecting the best minds in science and technology, BAFTA Guru collects artists from across the vast spectrum of human creativity and asks them to offer wisdom that might inspire the next generation of creative types.

Wright, whose abilities as an orator are second only to his skill at creating insanely addictive videogames, offers a simple tale that in a little over a minute totally defuses the idea that videogames are some new, horrible scourge on mankind's collective ability to think rationally. Have a look:

If you enjoyed the above and want to see more from the BAFTA Guru program, you can find all of the lectures hosted in video form on the group's website. I'd also recommend this examination of "games as art" by BioWare founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka, and this clip of Peter Molyneux being Peter Molyneux.

Oh, and I guess this Scorsese guy says some neat shit too.

 

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