From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. Bob Garfield is away this week. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

This holiday season, sales of Call of Duty, Black Ops, hit the $1 billion mark in just six weeks.

27% of America's entertainment dollar is spent on video games.

Recently, the Supreme Court heard a case in which California's Deputy Attorney General

argued that a 2005 state law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors,

since struck down, should be reinstated.

He noted in passing that the Kung Fu

fighting game Mortal Kombat might fall under its restrictions. The newest and youngest justice,

Elena Kagan replied that Mortal Kombat was an iconic game that probably, quote,

half the clerks who work for us spent considerable amounts of time

and their adolescents playing.

The court has yet to render a decision about extending First Amendment rights to video games.

Maybe you think they're mostly about murder and mayhem.

Judging by sales, maybe that's true.

But they're also about blazing new trails and technology and art, and I assure you, they are changing how you live,

whether or not you actually play. After this hour, you'll know why, but first some history

that starts, says New York Times Magazine writer and game a game officiano, Clive Thompson,

with a simple tennis game invented by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnow in 1972 called Pong.

He put it in this thing called Andy Capps Saloon in a bar, and he got a call a day later saying,

the machine's broken, come fix it.

And what had happened was that so many quarters were jammed in the slot.

It was stuck.

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