Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland, speaking to the Financial Times in a story titled “Music industry ‘should embrace illegal websites’” about a study partially funded by his company. The reseach shows that Radiohead derived strong benefits from its pay-what-you-want digital distribution of “In Rainbows,” even illegal downloads of the album far outstripped legal downloads.

This might work for musicians and record companies, but can it work for games? Lara Croft, Gordon Freeman and Marcus Fenix don’t tour, so they can’t sell merchandise and programs. They can’t do corporate gigs or birthday parties. They don’t collect fees when other developers “cover” their work. Seen in this light, piracy of videogames may be more like that of movies and TV shows, where the tangential benefits are minimal to non-existent.

Message board poster el_rezzo, responding on Kotaku to Variety reporter Ben Fritz’s critique of the forthcoming game Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization.

So when discussing a game about colonization, one should not bring up “bigger issues” like, um, colonialism? Wow.

Treyarch senior producer Noah Heller, discussing Call of Duty: World at War with VideoGamer.com.

When it comes to naming the Call of Duty games, there’s always something that ends up setting our teeth on edge, and this quote is no different. The idea that numbers or the lack thereof—in and of themselves—can communicate a game’s quality is risible, as the developers behind such titles as Spider-Man 3 (Metacritic rating on Xbox 360: 63) and Grand Theft Auto IV (Metacritic rating on Xbox 360: 98).

What’s left mostly unsaid in this piece is that savvy gamers believed that Treyarch’s Call of Duty console games were significantly inferior to those of series creator Infinity Ward. Following IW’s console debut with Call of Duty 2 (Metacritic rating on Xbox 360: 89), these more knowledgeable gamers were more likely to avoid the odd-numbered games—Treyarch’s titles like Call of Duty: Big Red One (Metacritic rating on Xbox: 78) and Call of Duty 3 (Metacritic rating on Xbox 360: 82)—and stick with IW games like Call of Duty 4 (Metacritic rating on Xbox 360: 94).

By removing the numbering, Activision is making sure that gamers can’t use that shorthand anymore. So consumers will now have to pay more attention to make sure they’re getting a Call of Duty game from the developer that they actually trust. It’s an amusing way for Treyarch to spin the series’ new nomenclature, however.

Epic Games design director Cliff “Cliffyb” Bleszinski, speaking to the Hollywood Reporter about “Live Free or Die Hard” director Len Wiseman’s involvement involvement with the Gears of War movie.

Bleszinski’s use of a theme park ride as an analogy for videogames is quite apt. While it’s certainly possible for a videogame to have more enacted narrative than a theme park ride, both pale in comparison to movies. This is even true of action movies, where the ratio of not-action to action is much higher than in an equivalent videogame. Marcus, Dom, Cole Train and all of the other characters from Gears will have to become a whole lot more compelling in their big screen incarnations in order to hold our attention. And since the game, like a theme park, only provides hints at what their more richly realized counterparts will be, any screenwriter will have to invent much of it on their own, as did the writers on “Pirates of the Caribbean.” An actor of Johnny Depp’s caliber in the lead doesn’t hurt, either…

Journalist and blogger Leigh Alexander, in her Daily Variety review of Kojima Productions and Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4

This is one of those statements that sounds true on first blush, but falls apart under more serious scrutiny. While Metal Gear Solid 4, like its predecessors, is packed with numerous lengthy cutscenes, the way those sequences are written is less similar to film than it is to Greek theater and the rhetoric of philosophical debate. As we said in our Newsweek essay on MGS 4, one of the signatures of Kojima’s MGS titles are their “…lengthy Socratic dialogues, in which two soldiers—Snake and one of his rivals—debate the nature of conflict, loyalty and human nature.” We’re hard pressed to think of many Hollywood movies that employ this technique, and we seriously doubt this is what Sony Pictures has in mind for its in-development film. (Kojima also likes to use his cutscenes for documentary-like expository sequences; finally, there are the games’ equally well-worn Codec conversations, which are more reminiscent of radio plays than film.)

It’s understandable why reviewers and journalists believe that “Kojima’s vision for games cleaves so closely to that of film,” given his extensive use of non-interactive cutscenes—far more than the majority of his peers. But a closer examination of how these cutscenes are put together shows that Kojima is actually drawing on a variety of narrative techniques and traditions, of which studio filmmaking is merely one example among many. In other words, just because it looks like a movie doesn’t mean that it’s made like one—a fact Sony Pictures will no doubt discover as it develops the screenplay.

Entertainment Software Association president Mike Gallagher, speaking about the recent departures of members like Activision and id software, in a Washington Post story titled “Fewer Players in the Gaming Group”

We realize that Gallagher has to maintain a stiff upper lip about this “member turnover.” But to paint it as routine is not plausible. If Universal Pictures and Lucasfilm were to withdraw from the Motion Picture Association of America, it would be big news and and the source of much Hollywood consternation. There’s something rotten in Denmark Washington, and it would behoove Gallagher and the other remaining members to clean it up before the flood becomes a tunami.

New York magazine writer Emily Nussbaum—whose husband is a videogame critic—on the game-like aspects of “Lost” in a post titled “Why ‘Lost’ Is the Best Game Show in TV History”

For all of the television show’s game-like attributes, we find ourselves wondering what Nussbaum and her husband thought of the actual “Lost” videogame, Lost: Via Domus. The reviewers didn’t think much of it, as evidenced by Metacritic scores in the low 50s.

San Francisco Chronicle reporter Joe Garofali, in a story about 8020 Publishing titled “Everywhere, JPG - magazines for the future,” where the images and short stories are created and submitted by its readership.

What does this have to do with videogames? Just ask the developers behind Spore, Echochrome, LittleBigPlanet and Xbox Live Community Games. Tomorrow, it seems, belongs to you.