Aaron Ruby and Heather Chaplin, authors of Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution spent a while NPR’s Saturday Weekend Edition discussing “Role-Playing Games, Offering a New Reality” (audio stream) — and despite the title, it’s not about Baldur’s Gate or Final Fantasy, but about MMORPGs.

I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet, but it seems both introductory and yet nicely thorough, covering the basics of how they evolved from MUDs, for example.

I meant to blog about Synthravels (which claims to be “The 1st online Virtual Travel Agency”) a few days ago and forgot. So here’s the pointer to it for anyone who hadn’t seen it already.

There were tour groups running in UO in 1997, and I am sure the phenomenon is older than that. But this is the first time I’ve seen an RL business for it.

Got this press release passed on from my editor, Ben Sawyer, whose other life is all about those Serious Games thingies.

ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES GAMES FOR HEALTH COMPETITION $30,000 Competition Encourages Innovative Ways to Address Health and Health Care Issues Through the Power of Video Games October 19, 2006 – The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today announced a nationwide contest to promote the development of computer and video games that improve people’s health and help them get the care they need.

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