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Reader question: What is “game changer” as in: Whether it is a game-changer or not, it is causing content producers and advertisers to re-think their business strategies (Forbes, April 21, 2010). My comments: It refers to iPad, Apple’s latest revolutionary, world-beating gadget. By calling it a game changer, the author thinks it’s something that’ll greatly CHANGE the GAME of multimedia communication (online news and advertising). As name suggests, a game changer changes the whole complexion of the game, the game being how an existing game is played with its fixed rules and regulations. Oxford defines “game changer” as “a person, an idea or an event that completely changes the way a situation develops”. Michael Jordan, for example, is, or was, a game changer to the game of NBA pro basketball. Before Air Jordan came to the fore in the late 1980s and 1990s, the game of basketball was centered around, well, the center, the tallest guy on the team. The center, so-called because he’s always asked to position himself in the middle of the offense, under and around the basket, used to the focal point of attack, dominating the ball in team offense. Thanks (or no thanks if you are Yao Ming, a center) to His Airness, who is a guard, pro basketball in America now revolves around guards and other smaller but agile players who operate outside, round the perimeter rather than the clogged lane (a painted area under the basket in which an offensive player is not allowed to, say, linger more than 3 seconds at a time). | 
