It was a close match, and with the margin of error it's really anyone's guess who the victor is; however, for the sake of closure we will declare video-space-games the winner. The Joystiq crew wasn't as evenly split, tallying with 6 in favor of "video games", two in favor of "videogames", and one write-in vote for "immersive interactive virtual video and audio simulation simulator." Even Google comes down strongly in favor of "video games."
There were plenty of great comments (and as usual plenty of bad ones). Read on for a selection of some of both.
- Sean wrote, "We have 'book' 'movie' and 'TV,' So why 'Video Game?'... When we take our medium seriously enough to give it a name of its own, then it is legit."
- Our very own Dan Choi wrote, "I'd prefer it to read 'video-game' when modifying a noun (as in 'video-game studies')."
- Brandon, a graduate of the prestigious Yale University, humbly submitted, "I'm a Yale graduate, and I say let's call them 'videogames'. English is a totally f***ed up language anyway."
- gjd wrote, "'Video games' just looks weird to me. It deserves its own word like newsstand, newspaper, flowerpot, thumbtack, or sandstorm. Look at the way you say it. The stress is clearly on the first word, video. Now look at the difference in the way you say "green house" vs. "greenhouse," or "blue bird" vs. "bluebird.""
- Mullinator wrote, "In case you havn't noticed the english language is very dynamic. It is always changing. In fact it is one of the great strengths of english."
- DG enlightened us with, "'Videogames' is not a word! If you think it is, you're stupid, and that's the only correct description."
- 32_Footsteps wrote, "The French keep it two words - un jeu vidéo or les jeux vidéo (not that anyone cares, but video games actually breaks the rules of French - the adjective does not pluralize along with the noun)."
- DG once again graced us with this thought, "Joystiq is the pain-in-the-ass (compound adjective, therefore hyphenated) weblog that made an issue out of nothing. This is very similar to Fox News and their Christmas nonsense."
- Benny opted for neither contributing, "videogames/video games sounds wrong to me anyway when describing them. I call them computer games or such."
- gmrc politely wrote, "This is a great, and tough, question. But the word is Videogames, just like Basketball and Baseball."
- DG, not sated with only two obnoxious responses, offered this final comment, "Even asking the question has made us all dumber."
