What is it about this little game that’s so addictive? Why is my Facebook news reel littered with Bejeweled Blitz score posts with the caption titles “I want my life back!” and “Where did the last two hours go?”?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it has something to do with bright colours and fun sound effects. Not to mention the voice that encourages you during solo gaming, “INCREDIBLE!” Maybe this is all an effect of our collective short attention span, but with the new Blitz version of the game they’ve taken it a step further. Now there are leader boards and progress graphs so you can track how much better, or worse, of a bejeweler you are than your friends.

I’m not saying that Bejewled is on the same level as really addictive games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI, which both sport in-game reminders that there exists a real world outside of the online fiction. But those games are persistent online worlds geared towards serious gamers who invest time and money into the characters they’re playing. Bejeweled appeals to all markets, casual to pro, and can be just as intense for some.

Still, why is it so addictive? “I want my life back!”

Read the far more interesting full article by Chris Jacob at GIZMODO.com. While you do that, I’m gonna go download DOOM and destroy my phone’s battery life.

“Gameplay is not everything,” said Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness) founder and president Denis Dyack. “If you look at the most popular games today, they are far more narrative-focused.”

Dyack’s controversial message was delivered during a talk at Brighton, UK’s Develop Conference calling for games to be considered as “the Eighth Art.” He highlighted the writings of Ricciotto Canudo, an Italian author and one of the first theorists of film who considered cinema to be the Seventh Art.

“That video games are art is quite obvious to me,” he continued. “The new synthesis is interactivity and gameplay. Instead of moving pictures, that which movies brought to art, we now have interactivity as the glue that brings together all the previous artistic elements.”

Read that again. “That video games are art is quite obvious to me [...] we now have interactivity as the glue that brings together all the previous artistic elements.” Yeah, Dyack summarises it perfectly there. This is something that’s been hotly debated for a long time in the gaming world, “are video games art.” And while I’ve been a fan of Silicon Knights for a while, Denis Dyack just scored innumerable points with me personally. But I digress, read the full Gamasutra interview with Denis Dyack here.

Now there’s speculation all up and down this rumour because SCEA has denied they are planning to drop the console’s price. And there’s reason to listen to them on this one because the 40gig PS3 option has done better in the market than anyone thought it was going to (given its limitations). However, the last time the cut the price of the PS3 they maintained that it was just a terrible rumour up to the day the price dropped. Sooooooo…. there ya go!

You can read more about this over at Gamasutra’s article.

I was rather excited when I’d heard there would be a Wii channel from which you could download DS games and demos. Such a channel would be BRILLIANT in terms of game availability and access. All they’d have to do is plug in some cheesy credit system or a billing system (much like iTunes uses) and the company could pull in more money than they’d spend producing the physical copies for store shelves.

But… it’s not true.

Nintendo of America peeps negated the earlier report about such awesomeness. Yes, demos will still be available for download (which will be automatically erased when your DS gets powered down), but not full games (which would have to have been written to a blank SD card on download).

You’re missing out on a good idea, Nintendo.