Death to the demoness Allegra Geller!

We got tired of watching endless re-runs of Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs some time ago, so we were pleasantly surprised when we found out about the Discovery Channel's newest series: Rise of the Video Game. Airing for the past 5 Wednesdays, this short series covered the history of the gaming industry since the beginning.

Last night's episode was about our favorite subject: internet gaming, and more specifically, MMO's. They did a pretty good job of summarizing the history of internet gaming and the rise of MMO's from the early days of text based games, up through Ultima Online and Everquest, then to today's MMO world. They talked to a lot of people we keep track of, including The Deadalus Project and Julian Dibbell. And we loved the attention to the potential impact of video game economies. Just like we always say, if you have a computer, an internet connection and a PayPal account, you can basically make a living anywhere in the world. A kid in India can make as much money as a kid in San Fransisco. Given the choice, we'd be the one in India if only for the fact that a small income in San Francisco is the same as a massive income in India.

Also in the news recently: Jerry Bruckheimer and MTV are teaming up to produce video games. Yes, the man who brought you such, ahem, classics as Armageddon, Transformers, Gone in 60 Seconds and, our personal favorite, The Rock ("What kind of f*cked up tour is this?") will now be bringing his unique brand of leave your higher brain functions at the door, in-your-face bombasticity to the world of video games. No specific game projects have been mentioned yet, but we're hoping for a in-depth, detail oriented MMO set in the world Victorian Era haberdashery. Can't you just imagine the exquisite lace and ribbons and the like? Absolutely delightful! Yes, Victorian England fashion as the basis for a Jerry Bruckheimer MMO. That would be great. But with robots, hot-chicks and explosions too, of course.

(Oh, and if you don't get the title to this post, you might want to check out the movie Existenz. It has a lot about gaming in it. But be warned, it's a David Cronenberg film.)