"...maybe this is the best of both worlds. An audience that, having crossed the barriers to entry, is by its nature more invested in our work; a public profile by which we have the means to occasionally reach into the mass consciousness, but which affords us the freedom to continue experimenting with subject, form, and style; an industry which is truly international; which is capable of producing both multi-million dollar blockbusters and single-creator labors of love (and releasing both on the same platform); which manages to be neither too big nor too small, and is the more vital, unique and exhilarating for it. We are a medium for us, and while there are more and more of us every day, we'll never be for everyone. In a way, that's beautiful." I think Steve's about right.

"The Twiggy Game is a charming cultural object from a bygone era; it's also a stark representation of what went wrong with boardgames, and a stark warning for what can go wrong with games as a whole -- at least, if we fail to inculcate, in ourselves and in others who love games, an aesthetic that prizes something beyond the brand." Costikyan on the dangers of games having a 'lack of culture'.

"The genre of the palindrome, playful and ludic as it is, nonetheless has a strong implication of violence. In the work of its foremost practitioners, Velemir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as some of their postmodern successors, the palindrome is closely linked to death, cannibalism, beheading, and murder."

"So why not embrace it? That's why You Have To Burn The Rope is fantastic... for games to become art there must be an awareness and a conversation with its own history. Film, music, and literary critic call this allusion, but for the creators, this isn't just a word, it's a dialogue. Which means it should invite participants. For me, I'm far more intrigued by stop-motion artist Patrick Boivin's attempt at turning a linked sequence of videos into Youtube Street Fighter." I'm not sure I agree with Wang on YHTBTR, specifically, but this paragraph is reasonably sensible.

Lanchester writing about games, from the point of view of a smart person who's actually played the games he described. I certainly don't agree with all his points, but I don't disagree with them all, and he's not mouthing off: he's making smart connections and indicating more than a passing familiarity with the medium. Might write a tad more on this.

"But these arguments aren't getting us anywhere because the problem isn't the games. The problem is the _play_. When we engage with games, we _play_ with them. We don't read them; we don't attend them; we don't view them in a gallery. We _play_ them. And that's a big problem."

"...arguments of this exact form have been raised against nearly every distinctly modern art form." Barber's book sounds interesting, if flawed. Pliskin's criticism is, as ever, good. It's getting exhausting linking to him.

"“It’s only a game” is a phrase that agrees with all of those who ever looked down their noses at the medium... who want to promote the kind of prejudice that will keep games from ever achieving widespread respect for everything they are."

"What's so remarkable about this series is that it seems more apposite, subversive and thought-provoking than ever". The book certainly shaped some of my own approach to art and criticism when I was at university

The banning of Manhunt 2 will prove to be a good thing if it helps companies like Rockstar to realise that the industry’s ambition should be the opposite of everyone else’s: to get off the front page and into the arts section.