CEO Ray Muzyka and President Greg Zeschuk of Bioware, a company founded on narrative-centric RPGs, can't seem to decide if the Wii is a game (as opposed to, from what we gather, a toy). In an interview with GameDaily, Zeschuk said, "If gaming is defined by story, then generally Wii may not be," though he immediately expands on that, "The game [4 to 5 people together are] playing is actually very different than the rest of us. What they're doing as a company is like a different flavor."

Providing a counterpoint, Muzyaka noted that the Wii experience is "more toy-like" but also said, "there's also a narrative between the players outside the game and kind of fulfills the same things games do. Games are 'toys' in the sense that they're fun." Warren Spector had made a similar designation in an Escapist piece last year, categorizing games like Tetris and Madden akin as "retold" narratives. The above is a rather bare-bones highlight of their discussion, so check out the full interview for more.

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has decided to postpone this year's announcement of its prestigious game awards for 2008 to March 10, 2009. The move is intended to avoid some of the timing issues with last year awards which required some games to be evaluated before they were done (at least one nominee wasn't even released until 2008). The postponement will also avoid conflict with the competing Golden Joystick awards, which last year were announced just a few days after the BAFTAs.

Who says old people don't understand technology? Well, actually, we do, and this AARP video quick tip (WMV link) on how to play video games just bolsters our case. While the clip is a little out of date (the systems being discussed are decidedly last-generation) the incredibly unhelpful advice contained within is timeless.

Some choice quotes (don't trust the transcript, watch the video and listen for yourself):

• "First you need to understand that there's boxes." (Referring to the consoles laid out in front of them)
  
• "The controller actually controls it." (News flash!)
  
• "Most games just use one or two buttons." (Bring back the NES controller!)
  
• "Oh, this is fun." (After about five seconds of making Spongebob run around a bit.)
• "This is totally fun." (After about fifteen seconds of moving Spongebob around pointlessly)
  
• "It's as easy as hooking up a CD player to your TV." (Funny, we've never done that)
• "This is pretty fun. You're getting me pretty excited about getting better at this ..." (This quote is delivered in perhaps the least excited voice we've ever heard)

Our absolute favorite part, though, has to be the rare, dainty, four-handed control method being demonstrated in the screen capture above. They're handling that controller like some people handle nuclear waste. Priceless.

[Thanks, rikimaru]

Go on, admit it. You're with friends here. When fast food chains run video game promotions, including game-related toys with their child-sized value meals, you order an extra meal for yourself just to get the toy. Or perhaps you're more brazen, buying the toy outright to add to your collection. It's perfectly fine to admit you have a problem. We won't judge.

If so, you'll be happy to know that Wendy's is hitching its Kids' Meals onto the coattails of Krome Studios and Amaze Entertainment's The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night, offering a set of five toys based on the latest in the miniature dragon's trilogy of games. The trinkets run the usual gamut of weirdness, including a Spyro-themed game of checkers and a Spyro keychain, which simply pushes the notion of "toy" beyond all measure of credulity.

As pack-in freebies go, these fall well below that of the competition, however random seems to be a running theme with Wendy's these days. To sweeten the deal, each Kids' Meal also includes a $5 off GameStop coupon for any version of The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night, though given the painful experience it was to play the last game this is simply not enough to make us go through the drive thru.

So you waited in line all day Friday for a coveted iPhone only to find you're already bored with the device's map-displaying, music-playing, video-watching, text-messaging, internet-browsing and sticky-bun-making capabilities. What you need is a quick, diverting touch screen game to distract you. Unfortunately, despite rumors that the likes of EA and Nintendo are looking iPhone game development, Apple is so far not providing any downloadable games for the device, or even hinting that any are coming down the pike. You can't even play your old iPod games on your new toy. What's a game-loving iPhone owner to do?

Enter the web. Already sites like iGiki, fun4iPhone, and MacMost are hosting simple web-based iPhone games to keep you busy. Much like similar web-game portal Wiicade, these games will work on practically any computer with a mouse but have been designed with the iPhone's screen and unique capabilities in mind.

Unfortunately, since the iPhone's Safari browser doesn't support Java or Flash, the offerings thus far are limited to relatively simple and uninspiring JavaScript games. Still, we're hopeful that the burgeoning iPhone hacking community can get around this limitation and turn the iPhone into the game-playing device it's obviously destined to be.

We at Joystiq understand that not everyone is lucky enough to have a job that allows, nay, requires them to play games on the job. The folks at Entrepreneur Magazine know this too, and are helping out by singing the praises of video games in the employee break room.

It's not that surprising that places like Popcap Games encourage their employees to learn from the competition, but even non-game related business like law firms and automotive websites are finding that games improve office morale and productivity. Employers also note that game rooms help attract younger employees and makes a hell of an impression during an applicant interview.

Still, aren't office game rooms an invitation for employees to goof off all day? Apparently not -- none of the businesses Entrepreneur found needed to impose any limits on play. As one employer paraphrased, "the only employees who might have trouble in this type of environment are the ones that can't regulate themselves." And those people are probably playing Minesweeper all day anyway.

A recent market study revealed that consumers in the U.K. are spending more money on downloading games than ringtones, music, or videos. Research firm GfK M² estimates the mobile gaming market is worth nearly four times the current value of music downloads and eight times the video download market.

Surprisingly, much of this growth has taken place over the last year, says GfK. In 2006 there was "less activity in the mobile gaming market as well as poor phone functionality, limited game offerings and perceived high prices". Even though most game downloads in the U.K. go for £5 or more, gamers seem happy to pony up the cash. It's only a matter of time until free ringtone sites convert their annoying banner ads and "give away" cheesy game knock-offs.

It's a point that comes up a lot in arguments about the cultural import of video games. "The medium is still young," defenders argue. "Games may not have reached total mainstream acceptance yet, but just give it some more time. You'll see."

We hate to break it to you guys, but video games aren't that young anymore. This month marks 40 years since Ralph Baer's Brown Box effectively created the idea of interactive screen-based games (and the industry is even older if you count Willy Higinbotham's 1958 experiment Tennis for Two).

This important milestone got us wondering: how do the first 40 years of gaming compare to the first 40 years of other forms of mass entertainment? Continue reading for a quick historical comparison:

Man, we can't wait for ... whatever the hell these Wendy's Wii toys are. Seriously, we have no idea what these toys are supposed to be or do, except for the limited information what we can glean from the picture over at the Wendy's Kids meal site. That one on the bottom left looks kind of like a puzzle, and the one on the bottom right is obviously an Excite Truck, but we have no idea what the other things are supposed to do. Is that Wii remote at the top supposed to be a disc shooter? A laser pointer? A pog case? We just don't know.

Until that "Coming Soon!" becomes an "available now" we're opening up the floor to theories. How in the world do these Wendy's toys work? The five best commenter responses based on humor, cleverness, relevance, plausibility and use of massive damage jokes will win ... the hearty respect of the Joystiq staff. Hey, it's harder to get than you might think.

[Via Wii Fanboy]

The world of online games is a great place to meet new people with whom to socialize, compete and share internal government documents. Wait, what was that last one?

TPMMuckraker.com has the story on Fish and Wildlife Services appointee Julie McDonald, who's in a bit of hot water for sharing agency reports with oil company lobbyists and what an inspector general's report calls an "on-line game friend." According to the report, McDonald sent the documents because "she feels frustrated at times" and wanted "another set of eyes [to] give an unfiltered opinion ... negative comments included."

The report doesn't go into detail on what games McDonald plays, but it does point out that she "engages in these games to relieve the stress created by her job." We're personally enamored with the idea of this government bureaucrat casting magic spells with this friend one minute and using them as a sort of therapist/proofreader the next. It makes you wonder how many other government secrets are being shared over game servers at this very moment.

Several different girl gaming networks and groups have pulled together a mass of games from different sites, forums, and other networks devoted to female gamers, and have put together this list of the final nominees. While they encourage female gamers to log in and vote, it doesn't look like they'll be screening for X or Y chromosomes at login.

We've recently been talking about developing and marketing games for females, and this is a great example of how to do that -- find out what they're playing, not tell them what they should be playing. However, in all honesty ... this looks like a list of games that could have been pulled together from sites populated by only male gamers. Further proving that the line between girl gamers and guy gamers is something created by PR and marketing, not the people who play the games.

Our advice? Open up the voting to everyone, but have them identify which sex they are (Austin Powers: "Yes, please!) from the outset. Once the awards are done, give us the winners, and show us how the demographics break down by sex, age, toothbrush color, favorite type of pizza, etc. That way the marketers will see we're all just playing games.

Apparently figuring that drug runners would rather shoot a virtual gun than a real one, Mexico City authorities have started a program allowing gun owners in the crime-riddled Tepito area to trade in their firearms for game systems. Reuters reports that a high-powered machine gun will net a $756 computer, while turning in a smaller gun earns an Xbox (presumably a 360, though the article is unclear) or cash.

Organizers reportedly took in 17 guns on the first day -- a relative blip in a region afflicted with 2,000 drug-related killing last year, but still a good start. Here's hoping these criminals find the idea of virtual violence much more engrossing than real world carnage.

Previously: GRAW 2 to be seized by Mexican state gov't

This panel discussed the rise of virtual worlds, the NPCs that frequently populate them and how games like World of Warcraft are much more populated with human players and their avatars. Although it devolved into a sort of "he said/she said" argument over user-created content and in-game behaviors, it did introduce us to a particular nasty bout of griefing in a WoW realm.

Apparently a player who died in real life had a funeral procession on the server she played on, and tons of her guild members and other players turned out to honor her. Of course, it wasn't long until some funeral crashers showed up and pretty much slaughtered the entire funeral party. In a way, it's sort of fitting, don't you think? Check out the video after the jump. Yes, it's been around for eons, but it sort of brilliantly explains, in a visual sense, what this panel devolved into.

After this, things sort of went awry and off-course. There was a lot of verbal jabbing, both good-natured and not, throughout the rest of the panel without it really going in a particular direction. We were too busy trying to find a good spot to grief from.

Almost everyone who has gone online with the computer or a game console has probably downloaded something at one time or another, whether it's been a song, a photo, a game, or a set of horse armor for their equine friend. But are digital downloads the wave of the future for full-on distribution? Developers are hoping so, because it will cut down tremendously on competing for shelf space at the local Mega-Lo-Mart, not to mention all those costs for printing games, manuals, boxes, shipping, and the like.

The panel consisted of Craig Allen, CEO of Spark Unlimted one of the big "shelf" retailers, especially with their newly announced mega-game Turning Point: Fall of Liberty due this coming November. From the other end of things was Dan Conners, CEO of Telltale productions who is in the middle of releasing Sam & Max as an episodic game, before packaging everything up into a retail edition. In the middle (and sadly, without much to offer) was David Burks, the marketing manager for Seagate Technology. You gotta store the downloads somewhere, right? In all fairness, Seagate was one of the SXSW sponsors, and he probably felt a bit shoehorned into this panel.