Why Are There No Highbrow Video Games? 424
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?"
Isn't art highbrow? (Score:5, Insightful)
No high-brow gamers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Very simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Movies can be "highly intellectual and cultural". Music too. Even food. Computer games are simply nothing to brag about in front of your high profile friends.
Does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are gaming consoles or personal computers themselves socially acceptable to that type of person?
If the device is seen as "low brow", the actual content present on that device becomes far less relevant.
Re:Very simple answer (Score:2, Insightful)
-Rick
Pointless article... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that "highbrow" is not defined. Classical music, perhaps the definitive example of "highbrow", was actually the pop music of the time; it enjoyed widespread popularity amoung all classes. One can profitably argue that this is because it had no real competition from 100 genres like today and it was about the only real music available of any kind beyond folk songs, but it was still popular music.
Is highbrow merely a synonym for "pretentious and boring"? I can't find it in me to cry about "pretentious and boring" not being well represented in gaming.
Is highbrow something like "acquired taste"?
Is highbrow "difficult to understand"?
Depending on how you really define what you're talking about, the answers vary widely. In the absense of such a definition, this essay is simply content-free, alluding to some vague idea in your head that may or may not resemble some vague idea in the author's head, which may or may not actually correspond to reality in any particular sense. It may make you feel warm and fuzzy to say something insightful like "we need highbrow games", but that's the totality of the value of the statement: warm fuzzies.
what is this guy smoking (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't take this guy seriously. fun IS the only thing that matters in a "game". if it weren't fun, it would be a simulator or learning tool of some sort.
says you. (Score:3, Insightful)
Merchant Ivory films are melodramatic garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
The kind of people who think of Merchant Ivory films as "high art" are the same kinds of himbos and bimbos that think that "George" magazine was the height of political commentary. They are the kind of people who celebrate classical music and ballet because they think they're SUPPOSED to, not because they truly enjoy either. They're the kind of pompass asses who laud the brilliance and insight of an Italian opera even though they don't speak a word of Italian and, consequently, have no fucking clue what the Hell was even going on onstage.
Yes, it is true that there are many great, brilliant, insightful films out there. And, yes it is true that there is a derth of sophisticated, clever, original, and intelligent video games. But film as a medium has been around for over 120 years now. And it wasn't until "Birth of a Nation" (25 years later) that anyone even BEGAN to expand that medium's horizons. It took 60 years into the medium to produce Citizen Kane, and 90 years for serious films outside of the strident studio system to become widely accepted.
Video games can indeed become a more serious artistic form, and they are already beginning to take those strides. But it's hardly fair to compare it with more mature forms, and downright pig-headed to bring crap like Merchant Ivory into the comparison (when it doesn't even represent a mature form of its OWN medium).
-Eric
The closest thing to high-brow... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think any of these games or type of these games will ever generate as much revenue as Madden Roster Change 2008 or the like.
I'd love to have a *GOOD* mystery game or something that challenges my brain rather than my dexterity. Nostalgia aside, the text adventures (sans terrible text parsing) is a good example in my opinion. Hell, put a GUI on it but figure out a way to give that great problem-solving feeling to it.
Hell, even let me eat the apple at the beginning.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Chess programs (Score:3, Insightful)
Chess programs qualify as "highbrow games".
Order Fritz or Junior from ChessBase [chessbase.com]. Play chess against the machine. Unless you've been on the cover of Chess Life, you're going to lose. Chess programs are very strong now. "Deep Blue" is obsolete; now multiprocessor PCs are beating grandmasters. You can buy and run PC programs that have beaten Kasparov.
Now that chess programs do better than people, nobody really cares outside the chess world. One of the leading chess programmers made a comment that explains what's happened. Analyzing grandmaster games, he discovered that, about once in every ten moves on average, grandmasters choose a suboptimal move. Not a really bad move, but one where a better option existed. That's the base human error rate, and that's enough to give computers a fundamental edge at the higher levels.
Re:Wait a second... (Score:3, Insightful)
Image is what it's all about...that and money (Score:2, Insightful)
On the contrary to that, however, it is often said by those who lament for the games of yesteryear that the stories and the lack of control over the plot is what makes the games golden. I'm mainly thinking about Chronotrigger and it's fan-base; often times, I see people saying how the story in Chronotrigger actually made you feel something simply because some things you did actually had an adverse affect on the game's ending. By the definition of high brow from the article, Chronotrigger is a high brow game in that case...but only to a certain degree, and even then, to experience what makes it high brow you need to commit a considerable amount of time to do so.
What it boils down to, I think, is that no one is really willing to dedicate the time to show that there are "high brow games" by the connotation of High Brow. To experience a game can take days; a movie or music can take a matter of hours, or less. Most people are not willing to dedicate that much time to experience a high brow item, or to rate it. On top of that, there is still the hurdle that needs to be overcome; we're talking about games here. Granted there are some masterpieces of visual and audio design, along with the coding, but it's still for a game. You can call it a bias if you wish, but I can understand while this is a difficult thing to get past when trying to discuss games in terms of low brow and high brow.
Planescape: Torment (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Isn't art highbrow? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let us never speak again of the sequel, though.
Re:Pointless article... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really. It was primarily the music of the church and the court, gradually catching on with the bourgeoisie, and once in a while a catchy tune would trickle down to even the lower classes (most of whom of course did not live anywhere near an opera house, and couldn't have afforded to go anyway). Folk music has always been the music of choice for the lower classes, that is to say the vast majority.
Re:Isn't art highbrow? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the problem is so much that we don't have highbrow games, as it is that no one, not even snooty columnists, recognizes them when they see them.
Hello? WING COMMANDER! (Score:3, Insightful)
Critique of the Critic (Score:2, Insightful)
Can anyone take this man seriously?
The problem isn't that the games are not complex, meaningful or full of value, but that the critics who review them and re-present them to the wider public have no understanding of why or how this is the case. Like the rest of his journalistic ilk, this "critic" seems oblivious to the importance and meaning of digital entertainment as a completely new communicative and experiential medium. As a result, the greatest justice he can do to it is to compare it to ancient art forms like literature, cinema, dance, and painting. But if the best analysis of the value of games is by analogy to other media (much less their "elitist" forms) you've already sold games out.
There is, in fact, a massive wealth of deep artistic, sociological, psychological and political meaning in many of the games produced today. But what do people learn of this in the reviews and "analysis" that we read everyday in the mainstream gaming media? Not a damn thing. To sum up the total contribution of mainstream video games analysis is trivial because this journalism is trivial: "Oh look! A technological novelty slightly more novel than last year! 8/10." Thats basically all we get. As such, the critics and journalists have failed to do their job and have thus failed games.
Honestly, it won't be bourgeoisie elitism that saves games because what is adopted as bourgeoisie taste is what was artistically avant garde five years earlier. Rather, we need to recognize that right now we are living in an era of the digital avant guard! The best thing that could happen to digital art is for all these lazy journalists and "critics" to get off their asses and read some philosophy of the digital and critical experience. I can happily recommend Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Roland Barthes, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Slavoz Zizek among others. Of course, you would also do well to start with the classics of art criticism such as Denis Diderot and Charles Baudelaire. You know, the guys who were responsible for making all that "classical high brow" art high brow in the first place?
someone needs a chill pill (Score:3, Insightful)
Merchant Ivory films aren't "high art," they're pretentious fluff aimed at airhead elites who think that "great actor" is synonymous with "actor with a posh English accent."
Relax dude. Of course there are lots of posers out there, but have it occurred to you that many people enjoy these films? Looking at their filmography [merchantivory.com], I at least think that The Remains of the Day [imdb.com] and Howard's End [imdb.com] were great films. In fact I like most of Anthony Hopkin's movies.
And it wasn't until "Birth of a Nation" (25 years later) that anyone even BEGAN to expand that medium's horizons. It took 60 years into the medium to produce Citizen Kane, and 90 years for serious films outside of the strident studio system to become widely accepted
This is where you really lost me though. "Birth of a Nation" did pioneer some special effects technics, true. But to consider it the beginning of an era in film is controversial at best. Here are some notable movies pre-1915 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_film#Before_19 15 [wikipedia.org]
So relax a little, it's art remember? :) Everyone's going to have their own take.
Planescape: Torment (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, when the game ended for me, I wept. I wept because there was no happy ending, only a bittersweet "best I could manage guys, sorry" ending. It felt very true to life, with consequences for each decision I made. When I was done, I felt that I had learned many life lessons, that I had been exposed to viewpoints contrary to my own and had come away better for it, and that sometimes the best way out of a bad situation is to be a better person from the start.
-Tony
Re:Very simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh I disagree.
Games like M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Mail Order Monsters, Tetris and the brilliant Infocom series of games were masterpieces of gameplay, craftsmanship and ingenuity. Games today have much better graphics, but originality and creativity? That can be argued.
My kid sister (who is 29) and I still regularly fire up the old Commodore to play M.U.L.E. Ah, the 640K floppy disk, no entering mystic serial numbers and checking with the company server to grant you "permission" to play your game .. those were the good ol' days.
Re:Very simple answer (Score:5, Insightful)
I recall a Star Trek toy I received as a child. It had a "screen" which was really a scrolling screen made of a big hidden wheel which simulated motion. To play, you had to navigate around various obstacles like planets and Klingon ships. Similar race-car games were around in the 70s. These, along with similar childhood amusements, are the true tradition that video games grew out of, and I doubt it will ever be regarded as high art.
Art is essentially a medium of communication, from the artist to the audience. The best art conveys feelings and notions which can not be conveyed with literal descriptive language alone. The interactive nature of gaming, almost by definition, excludes it from being regarded as an art form, beyond the creative trappings of the game's "eye candy" and music soundtrack.
Generational Disconnect (Score:3, Insightful)
But Rock 'n' Roll is now considered mainstream because those darn kids grew up. Video games are almost there, given how many adults play them too now. Let's see how long politicians continue to slam video games once 80% of their audience pipes up and says, 'hey! i play video games and they rock and you have your head up your ass.'
A definitive list of (commercial) highbrow games. (Score:4, Insightful)
- A Mind Forever Voyaging [csd.uwo.ca]
Admittedly it's not a very long list, but it's accurate, complete, and most importantly of all, non-empty.Roguelikes and Darwinia (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Merchant Ivory films are melodramatic garbage (Score:3, Insightful)
I should add that you state your case in a way that isn't likely to win you any kind of meaningful support, despite your points having some validity. I like many Merchant Ivory productions and believe them to be better than most Hollywood productions. But I'm not so much of a fool as to think that a film is good simply because it features genteel Englishmen and women. I would never have chosen Merchant Ivory as examples of "high art" in film. But I'm almost tempted to say that you dismiss their productions because they feature genteel Englishmen and women - just as egregious an error.
Good movies can be about flesh-eating aliens from outer space or about well brought up young women making their debuts in 19th century England.
Re:Very simple answer (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry but this struck me as pretty silly. Mozart wasn't 'high-brow' (i.e. intellectually and asthetically sophisticated) because tickets cost a lot of money; he was, like Beethoven and especially Bach a musical genius who made sophisticated, complicated and beautiful musical constructions. That the people who were predisposed to like him were educated and therefore also predominantly wealthy (in order to get that education) is quite literally a coincidence, a correlation which you confused with causation. That any Joe can pick up a Mozart CD does not mean any Joe can understand and appreciate said CD; music of all genres and categories requires an extant cultural setting and prior aesthetic vocabulary to be appreciated. But, any Joe with exposure and time may learn, like many people with a classical education already had an opportunity to do, to appreciate his works.
Re:Isn't art highbrow? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would a game designed to intentionally represent a real sport as accurately as possible be considered more "highbrow" than the sport it's intended to represent? At best, the highest form of culture it could aspire to would be the same as the sport itself.
I do think there are plenty of "higbrow" games out there, whatever that means, and it is one of those terms (like the term "insane") that is only used by people on the outside of both the industry in question and legitimate criticism of it. But I do get the gist of the intended meaning. Thing is, Merchant and Ivory (the example he cites from the film world) aren't really held in any higher regard in their industry than people like Martin Scorcese or Zhang Yimou, both of whom have made some extremely violent films. So I think looking for these sweeping, romantic, non-violent epics is kind of missing the point - that's a genre, not a measure of artistic value.
I could prattle off a list of 100 games I'd consider "highbrow" right now - in that they contain artistic elements that only those educated in critical thinking would catch (this is pretty much the definition of the term) - but I think it'd be kind of pointless, because that's not really what this guy's looking for. What he's looking for is the genre of romance games, which I'm honestly pretty thankful don't really exist.
(Sex games are a different matter entirely.)
Re:Umm No.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually high brow means entertainment that requires a little higher intelligence level to enjoy it.
The term "high brow" comes from "high brow or high forehead" which used to be seen as a sign of intelligence.
To use an example from the comedy genre:
"High brow" comedy may involve dialog containing witty puns, word play and/or other clever situations. On the other hand, "Low brow" comedy involves hitting someone in the crotch with a bat.
After seeing someone hit in the crotch with a bat few times, some people tend to get bored and want something more. It is this group that needs the so-called "high brow" entertainment. Doesn't mean that people who can't get enough of bats-to-the-crotch are a lower form of life. As long as they enjoy it and are having fun, that is great. The problem is that the some people do not enjoy it anymore and want more. It does not make them better than anybody else. At the same time, they should not be called snobs either.
What the guy in the article is lamenting about is not that he would like to see high art or some pretentious art. Nor is he implying that he is better than others. It is just that he would like to see something that he can enjoy more. And for that, it has to be more intellectually stimulating for him. Nothing wroong with that.
Problem is what he wants, he labels as "high brow" which to some people means he is being snobbish although that is not what "high brow" means.
Re:No interest in high art that doesn't elevate. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Very simple answer (Score:4, Insightful)
True, that. How can games ever hope to be taken seriously? It's not like there are ancient traditions of gaming with deep roots in our culture or anything. No serious intellectual would dream of wasting his time on a frivolous pursuit of the working classes, like chess, or go, or bridge.
"High brow," no, culture yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally believe some video games do reach the level of art like Myst that was mentioned before, I also think games like Sim City encourage us to think about things from architecture, to the quality of life in a cit,y and if they aren't exactly art at least qualify as a culture product.
I also agree with the parent that you don't have to be of a particular class to enjoy "high brow" art, I make less than the U.S. poverty level and enjoy both Mozart and Tool, and see no inherent contradiction there at all. Perhaps what we need is a less loaded term for art and other culture that engages us at a higher level than the kitschy trash pop that Americans seem to produce to such excess. Not all culture has to be "high brow" there is of course a place for mindless escapist entertainment, but if a society ENTIRELY lacks culture that forces a person to reflect then we are probably in deep trouble at a level that can scarcely be expressed in human language.
Re:Very simple answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a question for you: why should a game have meaning and message? Why do you judge an entirely different form of entertainment by criteria you associate with film or music? Film and music are passive entertainments. You absorb them and if they are good reflect on them. Games are played and if good you reflect on them. Not necessarily on the meaning or message (although that does happen) but on the experience of playing them.
Is Tetris less brilliant because it has no message? Does Civilization lack depth because it doesn't have a singular message? Consider, Civilization illustrates many of the changes that technology, expansion and cultural clashes have wrought upon mankind since the beginning of time. There is no single "this is good, that is bad" message. It's up to the player to take what they will from the game because being a game it is about interactivity.
When someone, be it random blogger, industry expert or Roger Ebert states that games "are not highbrow" entertainment or "are not art", people bring forward examples of games that reflect other mediums. "This game is art because it has a good story". I don't think this is the right approach. A good story in a game is pointless if it renders the game non-interactive and artificially restricts action from the player. I believe games should be judged on their own merits, not compared to passive mediums (music, film, paintings whatever) that they at most only superficially resemble.
To paraphrase Mark Twain (Score:2, Insightful)
-- The other Dr. Phil
Re:Isn't art highbrow? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Very simple answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The problem is even simpler (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether a piece of art is about dicks or courtly love, whether it was produced by starving students or for commercial gain, these things are completely orthogonal to the quality of a work of art. And games aren't crap art because they're made by companies out for profit or because they're about aliens and big cars. They're crap art because...well...they're crap art.
Re:Very simple answer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Very simple answer (Score:3, Insightful)
A good deal of the motivation for the upper class to go to some events is not to see what is shown there, but to be seen and show themselves. First, to show off that they are interested in culture and events. Second, to show off themselves and their new toys (cars, jewelry, whatnot). And finally, to engage in conversations with peers. Akin to a con, but with more people having a shower before attending.