Views from Medina Road

I haven't remarked much on the announcement of a special Hugo category for 'Interactive Video Game', because it's not a form that especially interests me (aside from once every year or two Myst sequels, which seem to be over). But Cheryl's remarks that "I suspect there's a good chance that we'll discover that very few Hugo voters actaully play video games" prompted me to check some results from last year's Locus survey, FYI. In response to "which of the following related subjects are you interested in?" the results were:

movies: 71%
NF/science: 56%
mainstream: 50%
mystery: 43%
comics/graphic novels: 43%
historicals: 39%
YA fiction: 32%
small press/fanzines: 31%
Star Trek: 29%
Star Wars: 26%
computer/video games: 26%
Buffy/Angel: 25%
gaming/RPG: 19%
Stargate: 18%
romance: 12%

In contrast, 68% said they read online publications, a percentage almost as high as the result for movies, which seems consistent with reports that the Best Website category was one of the more popular categories (along with the dramatic presentation categories). Computer/video games don't attract a great deal of interest, apparently, at least among Locus readers, but then neither do fanzines (according to this survey), and that hasn't stopped the Hugos, which after all are fan based, from continuing to host fan categories for all these years.