I ha ve never played a video game, but I do worry about the amount of time my (male) children spend fiddling with consoles, and sometimes fear they may be sucked into a mindless and addictive world. Tom Chatfield's cover story on the arguments raging around game culture has helped to put my mind at ease. But as he points out, a generational rift has now opened up over video games at least as profound as that previously associated with radio or television. This debate briefly flared in April with the release of the video game Grand Theft Auto IV—the biggest ever hit for an industry that in Britain now brings in almost twice as much each year as cinema box office takings. Video games are an increasingly important part of Britain's creative industries. And if Chatfield is right, at their best they can also be aesthetically and intellectually stimulating—as well as sociable. But I'm not completely convinced; there is also a very long tail of games that are mindless. And even the more sophisticated ones may, in Chatfield's phrase, lure us into a "precision-engineered narcissism."
Complexity is a welcome feature of the more demanding video games, but it is best avoided in finance and public policy. Some of our current economic difficulties stem from the excessive complexity of new financial instruments. And in her essay inside, Alison Wolf paints a depressing picture of the NHS's twin plagues of overcentralisation and complexity on its 60th birthday. Last year's medical training fiasco—which is being repeated, albeit more quietly, this year—is in some respects a product of success. After decades of educating too few doctors, we are now educating too many for the training places available. Wolf's case study goes some way to explaining how Labour can do something desirable and popular—almost double spending on health in the past decade—and yet end up with egg on its face. This is not because the money is having no beneficial effect. There is plenty of waste, of course, but the latest study by the Nuffield Trust makes clear that there has been a significant overall improvement in care across the service. Nonetheless, Wolf pinpoints an overcentralised style of political management that has not served Labour well in government—including a lack of attention to detail, a failure to master the mechanics of institutional reform and an over-rapid turnover of ministers and senior civil servants. If the now ascendant Conservatives stick to Labour's spending plans but improve on its management, Britain might end up with the modernised public services that Tony Blair promised. Meanwhile, Blair's former speechwriter Philip Collins sets out the case inside for a liberalisation of Labour. It feels like the first shots in a post-Brown positioning debate.
