The year 2004 will be a memorable one in the history of Western culture. Future generations will recall it as the time when videogames finally grabbed the attention of the mainstream culture and officially became the most popular medium of our society.

The quantity of high-quality games that have been or will be released in the last four months of this year marks a high point in the maturation of the videogame as a bona fide art form. And the numbers emerging from the business side of videogames cannot be ignored either.

Canadian videogame sales hit $251 million in the first half of 2004. With an extraordinary assortment of new games being released in the months before Christmas, that number could easily double or triple for 2004's remaining half. The recent heavily-hyped North American release of Microsoft's Halo 2 , a sci-fi shooter for its Xbox console, brought in US$125 million in the first 24 hours it went on sale with 2.4 million copies being sold. One of the largest and most immersive games ever produced, Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is expected to sell 13 to 15 million copies globally. Its predecessor, 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City , is the second highest grossing game of all time with $284 million in worldwide sales as of September 2004.

North Americans spend more money on videogames than on the movies. Compare Halo 2's opening day to the top movie of the same week, Pixar's The Incredibles , which earned only US$70.5 million in its opening weekend. (Granted, Halo 2 costs about US$50, whereas a movie ticket is only approximately US$10.) Perhaps more telling is that North Americans now also spend more time playing videogames than watching rented movies. Five out of ten Americans play videogames regularly and the average age of a gamer is 29. And for the current generation, videogames are ubiquitous, with 92% of American children having frequent access to videogames.

Sales figures alone don't explain the scope of videogame's impending takeover of our culture, however. But is it fair to compare games with traditional cultural media such as movies, books, or theatre? The diversity of the gaming world makes that a hard question to answer. Not all games involve a narrative, and a large proportion of the ones that do are still very childish and formulaic. One would be hard-pressed to classify sports or puzzle games as works of art, for example. As these two genres show, videogames still have their roots as simple diversions, having no authorial intentions beyond providing an entertaining way to kill time. Of course, many movies, books, and plays fit this description as well.

More than ever, though, videogames are fulfilling their potential to not only tell deep and meaningful stories, but to allow gamers to interact with these stories and explore their intricacies for themselves. Peter Molyneux's Fable , developed by his Lionhead Studios for the Xbox and released in October, highlights the differences between videogames and traditional cultural media. In the game, players can choose from a wide variety of behaviours, with the game's other characters responding differently depending on every single action the player takes. Act too violently, and villagers will chase you out of their town. Play the hero, and they will shower you with gifts. Ignore everything around you and nobody will pay you any attention. It's all under the player's control.

Among the heavy competition this year, Valve's computer game Half-Life 2 (released on November 16) looks to be the title that will stand out as the pinnacle of videogaming's progress to date. Scoring nearly perfect ratings from every major gaming magazine and website, Half-Life 2 deserves notice for its blend of technological wizardry with a complex narrative of government conspiracy and a focus on emotional involvement. A reviewer from PC Gamer calls it "History in the making. Valve has forged the framework for the next generation of games, demonstrating what our medium can and should be able to accomplish—an exhilarating entertainment that can emotionally move you one moment, kick ass the next, and keep you immersed the whole time."

Joining Half-Life 2 , Halo 2 , and Fable are at least a dozen games that could rank as some of the best ever created. Gamers are so overwhelmed with the assortment of impressive titles that they don't know which ones to buy. Konami's Metal Gear Solid 3 and Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: Warrior Within would both be easy contenders for game of the year were it not for the incredible competition they face. Similarly, highly-rated games like Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal , Metroid Prime 2 , Doom 3 , The Sims 2 , Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door , Jak 3 , Sly 2: Band of Thieves could all be overlooked simply because gamers don't have the time to play them, involved as they are in the 50-plus hours of gameplay in Grand Theft Auto or the ability to replay Fable several times without experiencing the same game.

The only comparison I can think of is to imagine trying to decide what film to watch if The Godfather , Star Wars , Taxi Driver , Casablanca , 2001 , Lord of the Rings , Pulp Fiction , Psycho , Toy Story , and Gone with the Wind had all been released in the same month. This is pretty much what's going on in the videogame world currently and it looks like things will only improve. 2004 likely marks the beginning of a golden age for videogames.

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