The future of gaming: Best thing ever, or Brave New World scary?

Jesse Shells gave a 30 minute talk about the future of games. This isn't your standard talk about "oh, hey, everyone is going to either have a holodeck or just have the games play in the mind." This is a more realistic look at gaming in the next twenty years. I must say though, that while it initially sounds awesome, I can't help but wonder if it is a path to our destruction.

The first nineteen minutes discuss what the current state of gaming is. It is insightful and I recommend watching it. However, if you want to get to the goods, skip to about the 19 minute mark.

http://fury.com/2010/02/jesse-shells-mindblowing-talk-on-the-future-of-games-dice-2010/

CNBC and video games

I've watched two shows on CNBC about the video game industry. The first was Game On, a segment on video game history. After that show finished, they showed Playing to Win, which covered more about modern game trends.

I'm glad they didn't just show stock footage of Doom, there was actually some good stuff in there. For instance, I've never seen the vector graphics of the original video game, Spacewar!. They even had interviews with Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell, and somebody else, probably. One of the things I hadn't known about was that Steve Jobs was involved in the making of Breakout, which was back in his hippy days.

Overall they presented the topics in a mostly balanced level. But why in the world though, did they decide to use Mortal Kombat music for their bumper music? On both shows? For almost every bumper?