Introduction

Video games have become a big time business, but Aaron Ruby doesn't feel they're mainstream yet, at least in the media's eyes. "I don't think the mainstream media has the first clue how to really cover video games," he says. "They know that gaming is important, but they don't really understand it."

Ruby should know; he's covered video games for such publications as Entertainment Weekly and, most recently, he and his wife and co-author Heather Chaplin (see Part 1 of this interview) wrote "Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Video Game Revolution." The book examines how video games have evolved from simple programs like Pong to become the elaborate virtual worlds of the top MMORPGs of today's era. TwitchGuru caught up with Ruby to get his take on subjects such as Microsoft, video game violence and the ever-changing video game business.

RW: Let's start at the top. Do you think there's a video game generation?

Ruby: I definitely do. What we realized after working on this book is that games play a huge role in people's lives. Even for people that started playing 30 years ago when the first games were coming out, those games were what motivated them and inspired them to embrace technology, especially in their professional lives. So there's a new and different kind of generation that has grown up with video games. It's the same kind of situation with children that grew up with television when their parents did not. I think the younger generations today understand technology intuitively today [better] than older people. Even older people that played video games years ago in the arcades are now coming back to gaming. They realize it's an evolving media and see how far the technology has come.

RW: You worked on this book for five years and have seen the uproar over violence in games swell more and more each year. Did you ever see anything in your reporting that gave you concern?

Ruby: I never saw any concerning behavior that could be attributed to playing violent games, but I'm of course not an expert. I will say that the most offensive behavior I saw was in RPGs. In a lot of virtual worlds, you'll seem some bad behavior; people sometimes use racist language, for example. But in terms of the kinds of aggression that studies claim is a result of playing violent games, I never saw anything. That said, I don't think kids should be playing games right up to their bed time. I do believe games have a powerful effect on people, especially children. I think kids can be over-stimulated by playing for too long and they become so cognitively engaged; it can be very unsettling when parents ask them to sop, for example, that they can become very agitated. But my concerns are less about the content of the games than how much time people play them.