Quote of the moment: The Daytime TV analogy

"Will Farmville games kill AAA [games]? Did television kill film? For a while, the film and cinema industries were terrified, convinced that television would prise their audiences away. They fought and complained and said that television was rubbish. And then discovered it was their saviour. It gave a long tail to movies A new revenue stream. Cinema was harder hit until it realised that it needed to smarten up and offer a unique experience, and now it is thriving.

"Facebook games are like television. They are mass-market, accessible, need no special skills (have you ever tried playing a PS3 game with someone who's never used a controller before...), and are free. They represent a large part of our future.

"... We are at the early days of Facebook games. To extend the television analogy, Facebook games are daytime TV. They're not even good daytime TV. In the evolution of games-as-TV, we haven't even reached Countdown. There is no Facebook equivalent of The Wire. Of Dr Who or Torchwood. Of Dispatches or The Blue Planet or Desperate Housewives. We haven't even got to soap operas"

-Gamasutra Expert Blogger Nicholas Lovell draws a parallel between Facebook games and another mass market entertainment medium