Quote of the moment: Stop the snobby sneering

"I think that making incredibly expensive, hard-to-play games that require proprietary hardware and prior experience to enjoy is a dumb way of providing gaming entertainment to a global audience. It works for some. It doesn't work for all. Zynga (and Playfish and Playdom and 6Waves and Crowdstar) have found ways to make games that appeal to a broader cross-section of society than traditional approaches have ever done. They have done more to make games mass-market than anyone other than Nintendo. They are the true mass-market of gaming. ...

"Multi-million dollar development budget games have a place in the market. So do casual, accessible, browser games that appeal to a different demographic. The gamers are saying it: 233 million people are playing Zynga's games alone. The products are saying it: Facebook games get more users than any traditional games title. The revenues are saying it: Zynga is making perhaps as much as $500 million a year from social games.

"So when will gamers stop sneering, stop hiding behind their bleating "but Farmville isn't a game" and start realising that Zynga have done something that traditional games have never done. They have made gaming something for everyone. Isn't it time we applauded that?"