Noted: Michael Abbott on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 marketing

I'd be quite surprised if there were anyone who reads this little blog who doesn't also (and indeed more frequently) read Michael Abbott's The Brainy Gamer, but just in case, and in tribute to his wonderful post this morning, I'd like to point any such hypothetical reader to a great example of the power of the blog form, which is at the same time the most incisive analysis of the forces controlling AAA gaming I think I've ever read.

Here's what I posted in Michael's comments:

From my hobby horse, blaming Infinity Ward for this callousness is like blaming the homeric bards for the graphic violence and smacktalk of their battles. By doing that kind of blaming, we certainly assert our own superiority (which is not an unimportant thing to do). But we also start from a position of having missed something that's culturally interesting about the game and its marketing. You catch precisely that interesting facet here.