The Banana Peel Project

According to a recent projection, the video game industry is poised to dominate the entertainment media market by 2011.

The video game industry is certainly experiencing what I believe is just the beginning of a long and spectacular period of growth. From Ars Technica:

This kind of market power could also be a boon to the industry in other ways; it might finally silence those who carp about games being “just for kids” or about just “blowing up aliens.” According to the ESA, two-thirds of US heads of households already play games, and the average age for a gamer is 33 years old, but reality has still not quieted the dismissive sounds of some critics. Perhaps $49 billion in global revenues will.

Of course, let’s not forget that the Luddite music industry hasn’t been helping itself out recently with all of its greedy DRM and P2P nonsense (pdf, but worth it).

In any case, video games are poised to be tremendously powerful cultural objects in their own right. Understanding what they mean and what they do is already essential if they’re going to be deployed creatively and intelligently.

And speaking of creative and intelligent deployment, check out Grand Text Auto’s upcoming exhibition at UC Irvine. Augmented reality and interactive art. I’ll be there.