Well, it reads like an essay, but this piece by David Hayward is actually a transcript of a talk given at the "Under The Mask, Perspectives on the Gamer" event a few days ago (slides included!). It's a brilliant and somewhat lengthy piece on culture-with-a-small-c, as it relates to gaming (as, in Hayward's appraisal, just about everyone is a gamer these days by some definition or another). Games, despite coming off as a niche subculture at times, are worming their way into all aspects of society:

There are still people who fail to understand games and fear them, but with the publication of books like Grand Theft Childhood, dust is beginning to settle on the paranoid scare mongering so often stirred up by the anti-videogame lobby. Everyone is surrounded by increasing amounts of technology, and interacts with it more each passing month. People are primed to play games, and videogames are now going to keep spreading and adapting to new markets ....

I think our industry is progressing marvelously. I?m proud to be a gamer, I?m proud to work with games, and I can?t wait to see where else they go this century.

Definitely worth a read - it's long, but interesting and has some great points within.

Under The Mask: Games Culture [Functional Autonomy via GameSetWatch]