I agree entirely that videogames haven’t grown up as quickly as their players: this is a point I made from time to time in my Edge column (for instance, Difficulty, Moral Maths and Ode to Automata). That’s one reason why I tended to champion the designers (like Croucher or Kojima) who I felt were pushing in that direction, even if they weren’t always successful.

As someone who writes books to be printed, I’m inclined to agree in the main with your second paragraph. Other things being equal, the fact that a piece of writing has been through the process of publication means that it will have had more critical eyes on it at every stage. However, this is not to say of course that there aren’t trashy books, and excellent internet-only writing, to be found. It’s certainly true that the idea that everything can be found on the internet is just an illusion. (A good proportion of my research time for Unspeak was spent in the British Library.) On the other hand, I find the promise of all printed books being googlable very enticing…

There’s a difference between an obnoxious neo-con blogger and Francis Fukuyama, between fanfiction and Dostoevsky.

I think the latter difference is bigger. ;)

I think that part of the problem with video games is that for kids, there are some video games that are very intellectually stimulating and challenging. I myself feel like my days of playing SimCity and Civilization really enriched me as a ten year old. The problem is that we grow older, and there’s nothing that brings us further, there’s a point where the games stop growing with us. This is silly, just like we have the Hardy Boys when we’re in elementary school, we have Thomas Pynchon for when we’re in grad school; so why not games involving challenges that stimulate the adult mind. Levels of challenge should be a spectrum, this is the problem.

However, this isn’t to say that reading is replaceable. I think that we should all be reading, regardless of our age. I would disagree with the idea that the internet has replaced this and is making us read “more than ever.” There’s a difference between an obnoxious neo-con blogger and Francis Fukuyama, between fanfiction and Dostoevsky. Print media is far more professional, and there is far more to learn from it. No disrespect to people who write online, but one really can’t get everything from the internet, or even a fraction of it. Wikipedia may be impressive, but at the time being, there is far more out there in print, and it would be a grand mistake to neglect it.

It is just a matter of a change in the format: less TV, books, newspapers and magazines, but a whole lot more internet.