Interesting Resource - Gaming Librarian

I found this on my usual first thing in the morning, circuitous route through the RSS feeds - that were lengthened by the long weekend. In the latest post, the librarian points out an interesting double standard between what are seen as depraved games/movies and books. In Conclusion... It will be a while before R-Rated movies (which we carry a lot of) and M-Rated games (which we carry none of) are considered equal in the eyes of patrons and parents. And don’t even get me started on some of the depraved violence and graphic sexual situations that appear in many books that populate (and are popular) in the library. It’s a sad double standard, but it requires baby steps to change. Hopefully this handful of games will be a step in the right direction for the continued acceptance of games. I think the reason for this may be that people, like the proverbial ostrich, will bury it's collective head in the sand to avoid issues. Books are very capable of hiding their content away in these little scribbles that take effort to decode, but visual media are, by their own nature more accessible, and that is the root of the double standard in my mind. Film is starting to be more accepted for a range of reasons, as people have seen the "serious" side. But games it seems are doomed to be trapped in a mental space that limits them to "infantile, childish and irrelevant". Is this because they are not understood? Certainly. Technorati Tags: Technology Integration, Game Based Learning