Of course it wouldn't be a story about video games without a swipe or two. The folks NRO got the story from, , have a paragraph referring to the LA Times finale that does the stereotypically tuned-out thing by saying on the one hand, money good, but on the other, "these students are studying video games for credit."

Yeah? So? I mean, not to make a molehill out of a slightly smaller molehill, but isn't that the same sort of casual dismissiveness that gets you into trouble when you file an incredibly complex and sophisticated medium like comic books under J for Juvenile, ignorantly tramping all over nuanced stuff like Art Spiegelman's , or Joe Sacco's , or Chris Ware's , or Marjane Satrapi's ?

The NRO piece exacerbates the faux pas, adding "[T]hey're not studying video games themselves, the way some colleges offer courses studying Pink Floyd's The Wall; they're studying the making of video games, which is incredibly complicated."

So studying "video games themselves" isn't? All the social science projects and behavioral research into games and violence and/or aggressive behavior as well as their potential cognitive learning benefits and rhetorical/theoretical relationships between players and virtual worlds is all tantamount to some implied catch-all screw-off drug trip? (Not that I agree with the implication's analogue here in terms of the oft and unimaginatively scapegoated Pink Floyd.)

Anyone care to tell that to academics like and and ? All the folks working not just in game design, but the study of and/or ? Game luminaries like and and , who've made it their business (never mind quite a bit of cash) to figure out what players are thinking and feeling when they play?