I came across this news article as I was going along the news page.

Basically, the general gist of the article is that Square is going to make Serious Games, in addition to their usual stuff.

To my surprise, the response from Gamespot users in the comments is overwhelmingly negative. This shocked me, greatly.

To be clear, from what I understand, "Serious Games" aren't games with a serious plot, or games with mature themes, or games deliberately made to be Artistic.

In the industry (IIRC), Serious Games is practically a technical term, referring to games meant to address a social issue, such as disaster relief, or protecting refugees in Darfur, or similar situations. The key idea here is that a Serious Game does social commentary.

This does not mean that "Kuma/War" is a Serious Game either. Kuma/War is simply taking the Law & Order "Ripped Straight From The Headlines" approach to game design. There isn't anything wrong with that, necessarily - nor is there anything wrong with kind of games we have now.

However, by making Serious Games, and making good ones, and calling attention to them, you can build up the idea that Games are something to take seriously as a medium rather then just a genre.

The game industry needs it's Maus (which recounted his father's experiences during the Holocaust), it's Safe Area Gorazde (a piece by a journalist who recounted his experiences covering the war between Bosnia and Serbia during the early 90's). Those comics provided credibility and clout to the medium of comics and graphics novels. Serious Games can do the same thing for video games.

    I've been watching Layer Cake today, and this movie really hit
the nail the head for why I'm really not hooked by the GTA games.
You're always at the bottom of the Layer Cake. You never really work
your way up the ladder.
    Now, The Godfather: The Game, because of the game's story, as well as
the respect mechanic, as well as a few other things, handles this
better then the GTA games, IMHO. You start off at the bottom, but later
on in the game you become a better earner, and you move further and
further up the ladder. I haven't played all the way through "Scarface:
The Game", I really got the feel that you were moving up the ladder
there as well.
    The Gangsters series of games also almost did this for me too. The
game's premise had you trying to basically work your gang up the ladder
and run the city. However, from various elements of the controls
(especially combat and watching the "work week") made the game really
frustrating for me.
    Does anybody have any recommendations for Gangster games which, instead
of you being basically at the bottom of the proverbial layer cake for
the whole game, instead has you working your way up the ladder to the
top so, presumably, at the end of the game, you're the top boss and
running the city?

As a general rule, I have a small list of countries that I'd consider moving to if, say, the Constitution Party's candidate was elected President, of if a draft was approved, or if the **AA managed to buy majority control of the House & Senate and got a law passed that we technically don't own any of the books, DVDs, music, and whatever we have in our houses (at least as far as usage rights are concerned).

Well, Europe just got lopped off my list, after I read this story which happened last week, which I somehow missed.

(Article from Deutsche Welle news)

In short, after all the legislation that has been pushed in Germany after two allegedly video-game related murders (one a shooting at a high school by a youth who played a lot of Counterstrike, and another two teenagers who called themselves "Sephiroth" and "Reno" after the characters from Final Fantasy VII, and committed a series of murders and kidnappings), a growing number of people within the German government are calling for EU wide anti-video game legislation.

Well, I'd already cut England off the list due to the pervasive surveillance cameras, high gas prices (in comparison to US gas prices), the poor conversion rate and other things.

France had been cut off of the list because of the pervasive poor bureaucracy (the fact that they, by all accounts, learned nothing from the race riots in Paris housing projects, which are generally inhabited by poor, unemployed Muslim immigrants) - and the fact that it's incredibly hard to fire somebody from a job, even if they're a poor employee, and myriad other related issues.

Greece had been cut off the list due their de facto ban (which still stands, by the way) on internet cafes and video game arcades.

Germany went off the list when they were proposing domestic laws along the lines of the one I'm livid over.

Russia had been cut off the list due to the pervasive corruption, as well as several other Eastern European countries.

But Spain was still on the list (I have a passing knowledge of Spanish, enough to work as the building blocks to become more fluent), Italy was still on the list, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium were still on the list. If this passes, all of Europe is going off the list, which I consider to be a damn shame.

Switzerland is still there though! ;-)