I am glad to see more mainstream interest in games that go beyond entertainment. Seriously, I am. But this NY Times article leaves me a bit puzzled. Partly in the right way, because it makes me think of the very thin line separating propaganda, advertising and educational games (the author calls them educational in general and, that is not technically wrong, since education is persuasion after all). However, some quotes are, welll, surprising. Like the one from the kid that says that the message of an anti-smoke game doesn't appeal to him since, well, he doesn't smoke. In addition to this, the article suggests that these games don't get much traffic, because Nick.com gets 50 times more daily traffic than Unicef's games (!). I am sure that Google.com gets many times more traffic than the New York Times, but what do we learn from that? The answer is nada, my friends. At least Kurt Squire is there to save the day and the article, but, I am sorry to say that I was expecting more from the Gray Lady. Still, I should stop whining, the fact that mainstream media keeps paying attention to these games shows that there is interest about them out there, and that is certainly good.