videolamer

Market capitalization is a measure of what investors think a company is worth, so it basically represents size. In order to get a little perspective on the relative size of some of the companies with which we, as gamers, are most familiar, I have thrown together the below chart.

As with all thrown together financial charts it has its shortcomings. Private companies, such as Bioware, SNK Playmore and Treasure cannot be included since they are not required to reveal their size and there is no market to determine it. Also, (and this may come as a shock to some of you) several of these companies are Japanese. This means that in addition to their market cap changing day to day based on price changes, when expressed in US Dollars, they change with foreign exchange rates as well.

I have also included a few other relevant companies. Exxon Mobil is the largest company in the United States (probably the world, I was a bit too lazy to check). → Read Theft Auto 4

Our long-term opinion of a game may have little to do with how good a game actually is. How we remember games is almost as important as the games themselves. The way we remember any medium greatly shades our opinions, whether it be a game, a book or a movie. Games, unfortunately, share certain properties of the other two media that make each prone to being colored by memory.

First, I will explain what about books and movies are different from video games in regards to how we remember them. Books are highly personal experiences; no one can walk by and share some of a book with you. All of the action, drama, character’s introspection and so on happens in your mind and in your imagination. In this regard, they are different from both movies and games. A key way a movie is different from a book or video game is its comparatively short length. Both how long an experience takes and how personal the experience is dramatically affects how you remember the experience. → Think outside the post.