Over at the Wonderland weblog of BBC games R&D wonk Alice, she's written up a well thought-out piece on the concept of public service gaming.

Alice's own think piece on the matter cues off an article on the same subject by David Rejeski published earlier last week on brand new GameSetWatch sister site Serious Games Source, which deals with games for training, health, government, military, educational and other uses.

The interesting thing here, of course, is that in England, the BBC is the predominant broadcaster and is funded by the public - thus, Alice asks: "Should the BBC, as a broadcaster, be doing games? Should the BBC, as a powerful creative content producer, be doing games? Should the BBC, as a public service entity with an understood remit to Educate, Inform and Entertain, be doing games? And what the hell's a public service game, anyway?"

There are some powerful and interesting opinions on the matter already, both in the article and the comments - feel free to add your own here. We think that public funding for the creative arts is a wonderful thing, but also a major bone of contention when the discipline in question is in any way controversial - which games unfortunately are. Perhaps that's all the more reason for forward-thinking people to lead the way, then?