Today’s New York Times had their annual “upcoming art season” section – a listing of movie releases, theater productions and television programs for this fall and winter. It’s a good way to start the fall, in my opinion. I can’t bother to keep up with all the new movies coming out, and it’s not like there is a lot of reliable preview coverage of the Broadway season in the Washington Post.

And there it was. On page 92. Seth Seischel had a preview of games of note that will be released in the next few months.

Usually relegated to a technology or even business section of newspapers, it was nice to see games being given at least some credibility as an entertainment media form. I never liked games being in the late lamented “Circuits” section; it assumed games were accessories to hardware.

Yes, it was a brief list with all the usual suspects and no real surprises. Very mainstream tastes. A full page, though, with some fairly good descriptions of what the games are about.

This is a small victory for the normalcy of gaming. It’s not as controversial as yet another story on the value of gaming, or as navel gazing as a story on who gamers are as a subculture. Games are simply regarded as yet another source of popular entertainment with some big titles coming out this season. When the story of games and the media is written 25 years from now, this sort of minor step will be missed. But I appreciate it.