Karakuri Babble is a daily column by the editors of i360.com, usually on topics tangentially related to anime and cosplay.

In the past we have endorsed many things; in the future we shall support many others.

Been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how I feel about ADV's dissolution, but I haven't come up with anything that expresses my thoughts as well as today's Penny-Arcade.

It's not "gaming" culture for him, it's just regular culture. You don't even capitalize the C to imply that it bears some peculiar inclination.

I usually say that the stigma associated with gaming will follow a pattern similar to that of Rock Music or Roleplaying Games, but I'm not certain those are appropriate, because those two have retained a measure of their stigma. They've managed to do so because they're still alien to the greater culture - but that's not the trajectory of electronic gaming. No, I think the operative metaphor is going to be people who believe in evil roots or in demonic possession. It's not zero, but it represents a marginalized body without a firm grip on the reins of society.

That's the sort of cultural ubiquity that I think we aimed for a decade ago, and that I think is still, in some ways, in the process of becoming real. Gaming itself embodies this -- because it's so closely tied to Japanese pop culture and Japanese aesthetics, its assimilation is part of the same process of cultural uptake. In some ways we're right on track, and the demise of specialized distributors is a natural part of the process.

words from chris, 2009-09-12 02:46:02, los angeles