Gamers are pissed and Nintendo is brilliant.

Wii. A lot of people hate it. I'd say the quick growth of posts over the last day has proved that a lot of gamers think the name is silly, ranging on childish. Not a few have declared it's the worst console name ever. Some have asked what Nintendo was thinking. The major news outlets have picked up the story.

Which is why I think Nintendo is so smart in using "Wii" as a name.

I've been reading a lot of the whole Roger Ebert "games are not art" business for the past few weeks, and I've got to the point where I thought I'd take my two-cents and firmly add them to some sort of piggy bank. So the questions: are games art? My answer: does it matter?

Hear me out.

Tonight Chronicle Books is having a book release for the book of iam8bit, which began life as an annual gallery show celebrating art inspired by videogames. You can see some of the art at the 1am8bit gallery page. Co-founder of the series Jon Gibson will be signing copies of the book and chatting it up at the 111 Minna club/gallery, which is right across the street from where I work, so we have no excuse not to go. How about you? Reception is from 6 to 9.

My boyfriend, Jesse, comes home to find me playing, yes, Oblivion. "Ooh, Oblivion, I've heard so much about this game."

He watches for about an hour, while reading the New York Times on the laptop. Then, "You know, the way you play, when people ask me about the game, I'm gonna be like, 'Oh, it's cool, it's a lot of jumping. Yup, jumping.'"

Come on! I was trying to raise my Acrobatics skill!

Like so many others of you now, I have a secret life. By day I toil in a cubicle, surrounded by the banal trappings of modern life, little electronic emitters that tie me to meaningless responsibilities - answering phones, emails, generating digital reams of content for ephemeral consumption. And all I can think about, every day, is that at 8 PM I will throw off this disguise as an ordinary mortal and embark in a world beset with peril as Thistle Rose, woodland elf and Ranger.

Thistle is an attractive creature, with brown eyes and dark hair, skin tanned nut-brown from spending her days in the woods and fields among forest creatures. She's made a lifelong study of regional plants, driven by her native curiority for ecology, which has allowed her to try her hand at alchemy. She prefers to make potions that help rather than hurt, although she's not above dipping her arrows in a little poison against the evil that stalks innocent people.