Why Are There No Highbrow Video Games?

simoniker writes "In his latest 'Designer's Notebook' question, columnist Ernest Adams asks a very simple question: are video games' lack of cultural credibility partly due to the fact that "we don't have any highbrow games"? Titled 'Where's Our Merchant Ivory?', Adams asks: 'Almost every other entertainment medium has an elite form... We produce light popular entertainment, and light popular entertainment is trivial, disposable, and therefore culturally insignificant, at least so far as podunk city councilors and ill-advised state legislators are concerned.' Do games have an image problem compared to other popular media, and how do we fix it?"

Ico

[Anonymous Coward]

got the low sales to prove it too.

Oops

[The MAZZTer]

Bah I thought it said "Homebrew" not "Highbrow". Now I look like an idiot.

Re:Merchant Ivory films are melodramatic garbage

[steveo777]

or Americans faking posh English accents

Then have I got a movie [imdb.com] for you!
Prince John: And why would the people listen to you?
Robin Hood: Because, unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.

Much better than the feminine Robin Hood that Cosnter portrayed. Pansy.

Re:Very simple answer

[Opportunist]

I dare to repeat myself (not your fault, was the answer to a different statement and done after yours), there is no "prior art". Nothing so "old" that it's revered as the "good ol' days" when games were truely art. No Mozart, no Shakespeare, no Van Gogh, no Fritz Lang. There's nothing where snobs can look at and nod their head, saying "yeah, that was true art".

Even if you create a true masterpiece now, it would not be taken serious until the gaming culture had its three generations. It would simply not be recognized, and in about 50 years, you'd be celebrated as the grandfather of true computer games art.

Your games may even be sought after (and people would maybe pay millions to just get a copy), the few remaining originals would probably travel under tightest security from one museum to the next, but you'll die in poverty.

Re:Re-Elected for a 3rd Term

[Lord Kano]

If I see President GW at a 50 cent concert I'll vote him for a 3rd term.

I'd vote for him again if he could run. Then I'd go to a 50 Cent concert.

LK

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[XxtraLarGe]

Also throw in Deus Ex: Conspiracy. A masterpiece of interactive art, as you put it. AND arguably one the best games ever made. Let us never speak again of the sequel, though.

There was a sequel to Deus Ex? How could anybody hope to top that? Next you'll be telling me there was a sequel to the movie "The Highlander".

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[Hoi Polloi]

You left out "Leisure Suit Larry"

Obviously, the author of this article...

[monoqlith]

Has never come home from a long day at work and settled down to a nice game of Shakespeare vs. Dante: An Interactive Post-Modernist Reconstruction of Hendecasyllabic Meter as Practiced Circa 1315

It may remind you of the robust Dance, Dance Revolution, only much less...hmm...how to say this without sounding like a snob....plebian.

Instead of contorting your body on a sweaty mat likely recycled from vagrant filth, you simply recline in your accent chair by the fire, light up a pipe, and compose eloquent verse in sync with the metronome, sprinkling it with chiasmus, litotes, synecdoche, elision and other poetic technique as the television screen instructs.

Sadly, it may no longer be on the market - though you may be able to borrow it from Oxford's archives. You might want to check out the sequel, Joyce's Dubliners: The Re-Imagining of Early 20th Century Literature

  A fetching game indeed, my good man. /takes a puff from his pipe

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[Richy_T]

You don't fool me. That's a goatse link for sure.

Rich

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[utopianfiat]

Monacle-bearing man: "Pip pip, time for a spot of Myst, eh good chap?"
Stiff-upper-lip man: *pushes shuffleboard puck* "Right-oh."

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[ConceptJunkie]

Next you'll be telling me there was a sequel to the movie "The Highlander".

Yeah, but if they did that, they'd probably make a really crappy one and have to do a third just to set the record straight... better they don't do any more.

Although it might have made a good TV series.