The U.S. Library of Congress has announced the recipients of a group of major grants in the new digital preservation program called Preserving Creative America (PCA). This program reprsents a new phase of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP).

I'm happy to announce that the Machinima Archive has recently added its 500th title. Brewster Kahle said yes to the idea of adding this collection to the new Moving Image collections area of the Internet Archive in June 2003, four years ago. Today, the Machinima Archive is part of the growing "Animation & Cartoons" section of the vast and growing Moving Images collection.

Nearly a year ago, I wondered about, "serious games? why not serious machinima?" on this blog. Well, it's happening. Consider the connection between One World Action (OWA) and the Online Machinima Film Festival (OMFF). One World Action "is working to create the power and opportunity for the poorest citizens to transform their own lives, and to challenge the international policies that make and keep people poor." That is certainly a serious agenda.

Yesterday, the Xfire Debate Club featured a debate on censorship in video games. From HTGG, Matteo was a panelist, and I was moderator. Other panelists were State Senator Leland Yee , Hal Halpin of the Entertainment Consumers Association , Dennis McCauley of the GamePolitics blog, Russ Pitts of The Escapist, and Dan Isett of the Parents Television Council.

I am delighted to spread the word that Doug Wilson, who has been a big part of How they Got Game, has just been awarded a Fulbright Program scholarship. He will spend the next year abroad in Copenhagen at the IT University, working with the game studies group there around Espen Aarseth, T. L. Taylor, and Jesper Juul. This is a very competitive program, and Doug is a well-deserving recipient of the scholarship.

Gamespy's Top 25 Video Game Cinematic Moments is in progress. So far, 15 of the choices have been revealed, with the top ten on the way. Since my work with the Digital Game Canon group for GDC, what can I say? I love lists now.

Matteo Bittanti is the logical person to comment on this list of game cinematics, but since he has not weighed in yet, here are some of my thoughts:

Rene Patnode of the How They Got Game group is currently teaching in Harbin, China. As he gears up for a return to the U.S. and the life of a graduate student, he has started up a weblog that reflects his current research and interests in Chinese media and popular culture. It's called Pop China.

The current featured pick over at the Machinima Archive is "The Hotel That Time Built: The Regenerated Dante Hotel, Phase 1." This movie made in Second Life documents a Stanford Humanites Laboratory (SHL) project called "Life to the Second Power: Animating the Archive," conducted in collaboration with the film and media artist Lynn Hersh

Euclidean Crisis, an innovative real-time strategy game designed by a group of Stanford students with close ties to the How They Got Game project, has been selected as a finalist at the 9th Annual Independent Games Festival, Student Showcase Competition. It was one of ten finalists chosen form more than 100 entries.

Matt Kirschenbaum of the University of Maryland has just launched a new game studies blog called Zone of Influence . He created it "to combine my academic interests in modeling, simulation, and technologies of representation with my hobbyist interests in games, particularly board wargames."

Here is some more of what Matt has to say about the blog and the subjects he will cover: