Techwaves: Videogames : Cultural niche occupied by kin of 'World of Warcraft'

Writing in Prospect (Nov13,2k9), Tom Chatfield remarks regarding videogames (he has a canon of these and a discriminating taste among the vidgames on offer these days:

I believe that World of Warcraft matters. Exactly how and why it matters, though, can be hard to get at from the outside; much of what reaches the mainstream media is a muddle of scandals, statistics and pseudo-scientific scraps. So I’d like to take a few moments to recall just what it was like to play this game for the first time five years ago, in the company of an old friend who had managed to wheedle both of our ways onto the game’s American servers in time for launch—and why, five years on, the character I created then is still soldiering on through the northern reaches of the world’s most famous unreal destination. ...

Technotes, by Technowlb

The gulf between those who do and don’t know what playing a video game is like is now one of the most telling cultural fractures around; and it’s thanks in large part to WoW that it’s no longer clear which is the more dignified side to be standing on.

Cultural Niching -- Arts, Sports & Games by Neetcha Meetcha

To me, somehow philosopher-engineer Hendrik van Riessen's The Society of the Future was prognosticating vaguely, phenoms like today's videogaming digital culture.