Leafing through the (New Orleans) Times-Picayune this morning I stumbled across a page dedicated to video games. The Game Dork page included a review of Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘10, a used game of the week, a new and coming soon section and a list of the Top 10 best-selling new games, as tracked by Blockbuster.

I’m a bit surprised that Blockbuster and not Gamestop is providing the list for new game sales, but here goes:

1. Ghostbusters: The Video Game for Xbox 360
2. Ghostbusters: The Video Game for PS3
3. Grand Theft Auto IV for Xbox 360
4. Guitar Hero: Smash Hits for Xbox 360
5. Guitar Hero: Smash Hits for Wii
6. Mario Super Sluggers for Wii
7. EA Sports Active for Wii
8. Wii Play for Wii
9. Haze for PS3
10. Ghostbusters: The Video Game for Wii.

I leave you with this thought: Haze? Are you freakin’ kidding me???

In it he blames America’s (in particular America’s newspapers’) fascination in the trivial and trite when it comes to pop culture and celebrity, for the death of more thoughtful analysis and prose in newspapers.

Film critics, he says, are the canaries in the coal mine of America’s newspapers. Having worked in newspapers for a fraction of Ebert’s career in print, both as a news writer and a feature writer, I was both deeply touched by his analysis and a little put off.

I hate to say this, but Ebert is just noticing something that has been going on for years. Perhaps it’s just come to his notice because he is walled away in the sacrosanct tower of not just criticism, and film criticism at that, but as THE film critic. Perhaps he never took notice of those fighting this same good fight over a lifetime of dailies, blurbs and briefs in America’s news sections.

It’s as if he awoke one day in France’s 1789 to discover that perhaps cake wasn’t a good replacement for bread.

When Ebert says that newspapers want to devote less of their space to considered prose and more to ignorant gawking, I don’t disagree. It’s true, but that’s not something new. You can trace the slow, mournful death of newspapers back years, perhaps decades.

If you want to assign blame I suppose you could point a finger at USA Today, at how that national McPaper turned every story, no matter how important, into a glorified brief with colourful charts.

Over the years, papers across the country scrambled to follow suit, shrinking their stories to fit smaller and smaller holes in the paper. Sure, some of this was done because of the desire to run more ads in a newspaper, but most of it was the product of focus testing, of hitting the streets and asking people what they wanted. What they wanted, apparently, was not to think too much about anything.

So papers, first small, then large, begin to cater to the lowest common denominator, what they thought was a genuine desire for short, fast reads. I remember working at a large newspaper when an edict came down that all stories had to be a certain word count, that the first sentence of every story had to be only so long, rather short.

But, some would argue, news can be brief. Perhaps the soul of journalism is brevity.

And so it goes. Until that slow creep of small stories and smaller thinking hits features. I was at the Rocky Mountain News when that happened. When a group of features writers were told they had to move back to news, not because their coverage of pop culture wasn’t important, but because news was more important.

So the creep got a toehold in the untouchable world of features, a place born of long ledes and stories slow to unwind. Soon feature stories starting shrinking. “Think pieces” went away. And next on the cutting board? Critics.

If you don’t have the space to cover news properly, to write long features, why take the space to cover a movie? Or so the thinking went. So Ebert’s right, well sort of right.

There is a canary in the coal mine of American’s newspapers, but they’re not the movie critics, they’re the writers, the men and women who fought daily to get more than just the facts in the paper, who worked to not just report the news, but explain it.

I’m not dismissing the importance of criticism. The fashion writers, the video game writers, the music and, yes, the movie critics, the people who cover all acts of expression and deep thought, are the barometer of today’s modes and morals.

It is through these writers that we discover ourselves and are reminded daily that life isn’t all pain and suffering, city council meetings and school board elections. But their loss isn’t the sign that it’s time to get the hell out of the mine, it’s the last thing you see before a deep, unending sleep.

So I don’t join Ebert in mourning the potential passing of a great institution, but only because I’ve been mourning its death for years.

Death to film critics! Hail to the CelebCult! [Sun-Times, via N'Gai Croal]

From the EA release:

The Spore Creature Creator will be available with the Herald Sun and The Saturday Daily Telegraph on Saturday, August 2, and with The Courier Mail on Saturday, August 30. The game will be free with The Saturday Daily Telegraph in New South Wales, and available for $2 with purchase of the Herald Sun in Victoria and The Courier-Mail in Queensland.

Exciting for the East coast, maybe, but not for NT, SA, WA or Tassie.

Full document after the jump.

EA AND NEWS LIMITED TO BRING SPORE™ CREATURE CREATOR TO AUSTRALIA

Spore™ Creature Creator to be available with the Herald Sun, The Saturday Daily Telegraph,
and The Courier-Mail this August

Sydney, Australia – August 1, 2008 – Prepare to test the limits of your imagination! Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and News Limited today announced that the 750,000 copies of the highly anticipated Spore™ Creature Creator, an introduction to the highly-anticipated and groundbreaking video game, Spore™, will be available with the Herald Sun, The Saturday Daily Telegraph, and The Courier Mail this August.

Developed for both PC and Mac, the Spore Creature Creator is a stand-alone product and creativity toy box where players create their own unique creatures, bring them to life with entertaining animations, and share them online with friends around the world. Creatures made in the Spore™ Creature Creator can also be imported into the full Spore game, allowing players to populate their own galaxies when the game ships worldwide in September 2008.

“We’re excited to partner exclusively with News Limited to bring complete Spore Creature Creator to Australia,” said EA Australia General Manager, Ryan Jones. “By offering more than 750,000 Spore Creature Creators through the three newspapers, this is the single largest distribution of a videogame in Australia, and is a fantastic opportunity for all Australians to rekindle their creative talents and have fun while sculpting their own personalised Spore creatures.”

Rubinee Hoyne, National Marketing Manager, News Limited commented, “We are excited to bring this ground-breaking software to our readers – Spore Creature Creator is innovative, interactive entertainment at its best and delivers something for all ages. This is the first exclusive distribution of a videogame by a newspaper publishing group in Australia and we’re thrilled to partner with industry leader EA for this landmark release.”

The Spore Creature Creator will be available with the Herald Sun and The Saturday Daily Telegraph on Saturday, August 2, and with The Courier Mail on Saturday, August 30. The game will be free with The Saturday Daily Telegraph in New South Wales, and available for $US 2 with purchase of the Herald Sun in Victoria and The Courier-Mail in Queensland.

The Spore Creature Creator is rated G. Spore ships for the PC, Mac, Nintendo DS™ and mobile phones on September 4, 2008 in Australia. Visit http://www.electronicarts.com.au/en-au/ to download a free 25% demo version of the Spore Creature Creator, sign up for the Spore newsletter or check out all-new screenshots and videos from the game.

Now, I hope this isn’t the exciting announcement EA was talking about, but it appears readers of the Saturday Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun will be able to get their hands on the full version of the Spore Creature Creator on August 2. It will be free with the former, while the latter will “give it way” for $2 and a coupon.

That’s all we know for now. You can check out the offers yourself using the links below (thanks Parabol).

Get your free video game [The Daily Telegraph]
Spore [Herald Sun]