Video Games market to peak at $35 billion

According to a report on the Video Game Market from Research and Markets,

In spite of the global economic depression, the popularity of video games continues to soar. Since 1995, when the top-selling Sony PlayStation first hit the market, nearly three billion video game and leisure software units have been sold globally. In the year 2002, 30 million Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCubes were sold worldwide. The global market for video games is expected to reach a peak of $35.8 billion in 2003. However, the cyclical nature of the market is expected to drive sales downward to about $28.3 billion in 2006, at an average annual growth rate (Aagr) of -0.4% from 2001.

Interesting that they expect it to drop in a cyclical pattern. Pity I can’t afford the full report which costs EUR 480.

Kate Taylor on Massive Change

Kate Taylor in this Saturday’s The Globe and Mail has a column on Bruce Mau’s show at the AGO. The column titled, “Why Massive Change feels minor league” (R4, March 12, 2005) points out what I noticed about the web site months ago – the show is really a student project by students in a special vanity COOP design program, Institute without Boundaries. (See my blog entry on the site, Mau: Massive Change and Overrated Sight.)
Of course, it is easy to grump. Now that the program is in Toronto I should go down and see for myself.

Michael Winter: The Big Why

The Question is not, he said, were you loved. Or did you love. Or did you love yourself. Or did you allow love to move you, though that’s a big one. Move you. The question, Rockwell, is did you get to be who you are. And if not, then why. What, my friend, is the big why. (p. 372)

The Big Why is a novel by Michael Winter about Rockwell Kent’s stay in Newfoundland during the war. It is well written, though I don’t understand why Winter doesn’t like certain types of punctuation. There is a thread about Newfoundland and the brutal marine life that is terrific (or terrifying) and a thread about Rockwell Kent (no relation) and his relationships with women. From the sounds of it, Rockwell Kent was a prick when it came to women (and one suspects that’s what Winter likes about him), but the narration by Kent doesn’t quite match the character described as if Winter were trying to soften Kent by letting a more senstive 1990s Kent narrate a 1940s arrogant artist.
The philosophical reflections, however, make this discrepancy worth it … are we who we are?
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For more on Kent, see the Rockwell Kent Gallery and Collection, Plattsburgh.

Council of Ontario Universities: Graduate Enrollment

Face the Facts Ontario is a page in the COU site with links to PDF reports. In particular there is a good one, Advancing Ontario’s Future Through Advanced Degrees (2003) on the need to double graduate enrollments. I suspect the recommendations and data in this report influenced the Rae Report on the need for more places for graduate students.
The report has a nice short history of Ontario graduate education – the first MAs were given in 1845 by King’s College and the first PhD in 1900. There is a wealth of data and interpretation in the report.
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Paul Gravett: Manga

mang.jpg Manga by Paul Gavett is a large format illustrated introduction to manga – Japanese comics. The two characters in Man-ga can be translated “irresponsible pictures”, but has come to mean a particular Japanese form of comics often consumed in thick books full of serialized stories. Gavett does a good job of surveying the history of manga from Osamu Tezuka to the nouvelle manga “movement” of Boilet. (See the previous blog entry on Nouvelle Manga Digitale.)
Gravett occaisionally tries too hard to present a view that manga is not just “tits’n tentacles” or sexist eye-candy for boys. He is best when documenting manga for girls (think Sailor Moon) and the cultural context of manga in Japan. (Think about how hard it is to translate comics into English when the order of the panels is right-to-left.) The real value of the book are the illustrations that give you a feel for the variety and graphic inventiveness of Japanese manga. I can see how manga, an enourmous almost entirely domestic business, is a vast reservoir of plots, visual ideas, and characters for animation (which does translate easier), games, toys and cards. One could argue that the Japanese incredible everyday consumption of manga buttresses other industries so that they can compete internationally. We don’t see the manga, but we see the animations, the kids toys, and the computer games.
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3 Classic Anime

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I’ve been dipping into Japanese manga and anime culture. Japanese science fiction animated movies like Akira (1988), Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Metropolis (2001) have a visual grammar that has influenced computer game design and cyberpunk movies like the Matrix. They also have a willingness to tackle interesting philosophical issues like the nature of the soul or “ghost” in a cybernetic world (Ghost in the Shell).

In effect, boys anime and manga, like the fumetti I read as a kid in Italy (see uBC – Enciclopedia), combine smart speculative fiction plots with soft porn and tech-heavy violence. This mix can be seen in the Fraco-Belgian adult Bande DessinÈe like Moebius.

Whether we approve of this mix, and, of course, we don’t, there is an energy to boy culture and it is the source for much of the style of online culture.
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Making the case for arts and culture

Update: The link below is broken, but here is a link to their new Arts Promotion Kit. Lots of good links in there.

The Canada Council for the Arts has a neat little site that provides an Advocacy resource kit. It for Canada as it has mostly Canadian facts and quotes. Nobody like to do advocacy – it makes us feel dirty, especially if we are trying to advocate for noble enterprises like churches, universities or arts. That said, we can learn from the health sector. Through ongoing advocacy they have been able to effectively make the case for funding of health care (and health research). If we believe in what we do why should we be ashamed to tell people?
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