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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?"
Both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus transcend simple "gamehood" and, to me at least, stand as true works of interactive art. A game doesn't have to be stilted and boring to be highbrow.
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Honestly, don't you have something better to do with your time?
Making games costs money. People with lots of money don't want to spend lots of money on "intellectual" games. Because it's just games.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Suppose the only music in all the world were rap or heavy metal. Do you think music would have anything like the level of respect that it does now? Would there be Kennedy Center Honors, with the President in the audience, for 50 Cent or Nuclear Assault? I doubt it.
If I see President GW at a 50 cent concert I'll vote him for a 3rd term.
You mean that they focus on emotional problems in a deep and meaningful manner?
People don't like to do that, they like to watch other people fail at doing that.
As far as high brow goes, we have Patrician, Total War, Civilization, and the Sims.
All of which offer some pretty interesting insights if you look deeply into them.
One of the largest factors is probably that in a book a grammatical mistake is something from the author that might lead you to think about something diffrently, a bug in a game totally spoils your ability to analyse the small points that are so important for real understanding of the artist.
I believe there are highbrow games out there. You just have to look. I am considering a high brow game to be one that is fun, deep and has the ability to move you. For Example, Call of Duty for PC. That game gave me goose bumps. It was immersive and deep. You couldn't just run in and kill everything, you had to hold back and fight like it actually was a war and not a deathmatch. Even multiplayer had this feel. You would be dead in an instant if you ran into a room with guns blazing. Also games such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic would be in this category. It has a very epic feel too it and above all, it was supremely enjoyable to playthrough. These are highbrow games to me.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
Because artists would rather write books or direct movies.
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I believe that video games do have a bad public image, but I believe it's because they're viewed as a waste of time. I don't necessicarily agree with that view, but I can see why people may think so. You sit on your couch for hours on end pushing buttons with your hand. My parents never liked any of us playing video games unless the weather was too bad outside to go play. They hated my Everquest days.
So, it's not so much the content of the video games, more the medium.
How many people who are into "high brow" activities would bother to use a common technology like a video game?
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.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
...there's no high-brow reality TV shows, but that genre's still booming...
How about chess? Sudoku? Or an RTS? Both require quite a lot of brain power instead of mindless button mashing.
Come to think of it, I think most puzzle-based games would qualify. Tetris (and its clones) require some strategy, and even the simple puzzles found in games like Zelda bring up the brow level.
We don't want good ones! Look at the reaction to Elephant's Dream - the plot of which covered an abstract look at the internet - on Slashdot. Total mockery. Even Wikipedia doesn't bother to mention the story.
Can you immagine the Slashdot comments if ED was used as the basis for a game, exploring the nature of the internet?
Couple that with the fact that naturally creative types are pushed away from/dont want to touch programming or the 'hard' subjects that go along with video game design and you end up with the situation we have today.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Does anybody here really want video games to be 'fixed' so that they appeal to people who's greatest converns are in the tabloids?
-Tim Louden
got the low sales to prove it too.
This is a pointless article... but I'm probably not saying that for the reason why you think I'm saying that.
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.
There are no highbrow video games because there are none that are expensive enough.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Bah I thought it said "Homebrew" not "Highbrow". Now I look like an idiot.
from TFA: And before yet another idiot pipes up with Standard Asinine Comment #1 ("but FUN is the only thing that matters!"), let me just say: No, it's not. Shut up and grow up. Our overemphasis on fun--kiddie-style, wheeee-type fun--is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place. To merely be fun is to be unimportant, irrelevant, and therefore vulnerable.
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.
I consider Myth high brow.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
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
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
lovechess! Now that's classy on so many levels.
Because games as a medium have yet to "mature" to the point where they're as acceptable to the public as movies and television. in fact, when TV and movies were in their infancy, there was no highbrow entertainment to be had there, either. These things just take time.
How about stratergy games like Total Annihilation or Rise of Nations that take a lot of investment in learning the game mechanics and thought that goes into tactics? Or RPGs? Frankly, there are lots of high-brow games but they're just less popular (duh) due to the amount of time you have to put in to them.
The closest thing to high-brow for video games that you are going to get will be things like Silent Hill, Shadows of the Collosus, ICO, Killer 7, and maybe something like Siren.
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.
Chess and Bridge come to mind. Those are two games that are often played by the literatti...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Do you really expect them to come out with an SAT Stanford Review game for Xbox? How would they make money off of that?
(By the way, I'm assuming the closest thing to a definition the author gave, dealing with "history, science, technology, politics, music, art, religion, diplomacy, family, manners, love, death, duty, sorrow, revenge, depression, and joy" isn't what he really means by "highbrow" because there are umpteen bajillion good games that deal with each of those, and I'm hoping and praying the author isn't ignorant of all of them, because many of them are quite mainstream. I'm pretty sure the author is invoking just the vague meaning in his head, and just put this here to try to rationalize it, poorly.)
The number of "highbrow" people has been in steady decline since the fifties. What we called high culture then has been becoming less and less popular concurrently. The modern man does not go to museums, listen to operas, read poetry or serious fiction, or, for that matter, read much of anything at all. He has replaced it with television, its reality shows and Fox news; he buys widescreen sets, useless (but entertaining) gadgets, and ugly comfortable couches upon which to sit and drink beer on sundays. Most don't own any books, paintings, or musical instruments. Playing music has pretty much died out and only listening to it is still popular. The type of music also has migrated away from "highbrow" classical styles and has been replaced with obscenity-laced rap. So it is with video games and most other areas of cultural expression, all of which must be tailored to the audience. The products of a culture degrade with the degradation of the tastes of its citizens. Nothing surprizing here.
There is "Serious" Sam forchristsakes!!!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
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But to be honest, I don't know if I can take somebody seriously who says something like 'Suppose the only music in all the world were rap or heavy metal.'
I mean, honestly, has the guy never heard of Saul Williams?
Hell, even Tupac wrote books of poetry, and with artists out there like Mos Def, Talib Qweli, Outkast, etc., it's hard to understand how somebody could use rap music collectively as an example of "low art".
But then again, given his examples of high art being the kind of things that wealthy white people put on tuxes to clap softly to, I'm not sure I'm particularly interested in what he has in mind.
I thought Shenmue was somewhat of a highbrow "game". I think part of the reason it failed commercially was due to its sort of highbrow nature. It had the game elements in it, but then it was also kind of a big tech demo and an actual virtual recreation of 1980's Japan and Hong Kong. Shenmue 2 even had artsy filters for sepia and black and white looks to give it even more of a highbrow feel. It also had an epic story (that unfortunately looks like we'll never learn the end of) with a character struggling to find himself after his dad is mysteriously murdered.
Read my blog posts on usability.
I don't know about "highbrow". I'd settle for a game that doesn't insult my intelligence. This, of course, eliminates the simplified cel-shaded Zelda travesty, and Halo 2 on XBL with voicemasking allowed.
High brow means "we're better than you are because of our choice of entertainment".
There are no high brow videogames because the people you think are the better people don't talk about how they're better because they play Y videogame instead of Z videogame.
In other words: STFU you pompous, pretentious snob.
Entertainment isn't high brow or low brow. Different people are entertained differently by different things and no one is better or worse because of their entertainment choices.
Chess programs qualify as "highbrow games".
Order Fritz or Junior from ChessBase. 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.
The premise is nonsense. There are plenty of highbrow games. Is he really suggesting that a game like Cvilisation IV is dumbed down?
Sure, there are lots of dumbed down stupid games that treat the gamer like a dork, but there are plenty of stupid dumbed down TV programs, and that doesnt invalidate stuff like "The West Wing". There are plenty of stupid movies aimed at morons, but that doesn't invalidate stuff like "Syriana" (yeah ok, insert your choice of whats highbrow here).
To be honest, people writing articles like this don't help at all. I've tried making a 'highbrow' game (www.democracygame.com) that requires in-depth knowledge of politics, and is peppered with quotes from plato, ghandi et al. The game is actually quite popular and sells well, no thanks to people endlessly claiming that such games do not exist. If you didn't know about the more intellectual games, but you read this article, all it will do is discourage you from looking any further, and confirm peoples rpejudices about all games being dumbed down. grrrrrrrrr.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
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General populace is not high brow.
Highbrow movies seldom do well at the box office, and it's why they're the minority of films, generally made independantly, and relegated only to a cult status 9/10.
It's the same with games, except the major audience is younger so in most cases less sophisticated. There's even less of a market. That's not to say there aren't some excellent, intelligent, and mature games. Some examples have already been posted, Shenmue I think is most in line with the author's perspective.
Nothing to see here..
If it means something that requires a level of cultural understanding, then games like Civ, Sim City and the like would qualify in my book. Sure, you can play them as games, or you can immerse yourself in the worlds and try to develop them.
If it means something that is pretentious and incomprehensible then Ico would fit the bill.
If it means something that everyone pretends to like but no one actually does, then Final Fantasy comes to mind.
Simply put, a "high brow" game, as TFA seems to try to define it, simply would not sell because conceptually it does not work for a game. If we take the intended definition of high brow as touching emotions and addressing subjects that are not usually handled by the low brow media, then in order to do so, a large focus of the game needs to be shifted to the story telling and the content rather than the gaming itself, which should be a factor. A large reason that it's hard to tap the deep emotions that most humans have is because of the freedom in games; take sandbox style RPGs like Oblivion which are the most likely candidates for the title of "High Brow" games. There are surely a lot of deaths in the game, but do the players feel any remorse over the death of these characters? Not really, because they have more control over it than the game does over them. Players are able to kill relentlessly with the only penalty being that they will be struck down by the wrath of the town guard, or have to pay a fine. Also, the all important save/load allows them to control the story in such a way that everything can turn out perfect in the end. Inevitably, it seems, the player will never have an unsatisfactory ending, since they are simply manufacturing the story as they see fit. True, the gamer can manufacture a story in which not everything is perfect, but whether the game can react to this is a completely different story.
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.
Wikipedia refers to 'highbrow' as "intellectual" or "high culture," and it's interesting that the etymology goes back to phrenology. Wordnet offers a short definition: "highly cultured or educated."
I feel that there are plenty of games that are "smart enough." Depends on how the player is able to interpret them. As with any creative work, the interpretation is up to the consumer, not the creator. When the consumer is able to get a meaning out of the work that the creator hadn't intended to convey - that's a sign of quality.
One might argue that the question "Why are there no highbrow video games?" points back to the questioner. Reworded for truth: "Why are there no video games that are smart enough for me?" Well, maybe you should look into yourself and figure out why you've placed yourself in a different intellectual class than "run-of-the-mill gamers." Take another look and see what meaning you can discover. There might be something you missed.
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The thing is that Merchant-Ivory costume dramas weren't highbrow. They flattered the audience with their lush period settings and aristocratic finery, though beneath that were about as challenging and thought-provoking as a Stephen Spielberg blockbuster. In a sense, they were the perfect art form of Thatcher's Britain: dressed up in the seductive trappings of wealth, though populist at the core, and placing commercial calculation before any sort of artistic or intellectual decisions.
I'd suggest Europa Universalis (http://www.europa-universalis.com) is probably a good stab at this. Especially as the game format is quite open and there's an active user community who have enhanced it to include a plethora of historical events (and what-if's) at a quite staggering level of detail.
;-), but for anyone with an interest in history the ability to play what-if is really quite addictive. The game engine is rather impressive in that it moulds the game to follow generally historical lines without any overt manipulation or closing the door on the occasional wildly different outcome.
It's not the kind of game that appeals to everyone (but it's highbrow right
Every single one of the descriptions listed describe Planescape: Torment to a T. Artistry, writing, music, characters, emotions...the only other RPG that has that much quality is Baldur's Gate 2.
High brow games are out there, just not in such a great quantity or as well advertised as your latest EA offering. A perfect example is Republic: The Revolution, which involved building up your own political party through different tactics such as subversion and persuasion.
The difference with republic is that it had a bigger budget and more flashy graphics, unlike most indepedently produced intellectual games. After all, whats so high brow about photo realism and celebrity voice overs.. leave that to the latest Maddon game.
> Is highbrow merely a synonym for "pretentious and boring"?
Sometimes it is, though it may be due to hypocrisy rather than intent. The culture of the elite is supposed to portray the best traits of humanity, its noblest and worthiest virtues, its most beautiful aspirations, and the perfection of taste. One might contrast this with the culture of the "proles", which tends to glorify mediocrity and small aspirations, encouraging its consumers to adhere to a "steady-state" life of simple wants, of "living for today", of thinking as little as possible, and generally enjoying what they have.
The danger of striving for perfection lies in the inability of some people to objectively judge their own abilities and achievements. The culture of the elite naturally incorporates the belief that a man can better himself, and unless this man knows what "better" means, he could simply assume he is already "better" than everyone else. These are the "highbrow" types that we normally call "prudes".
> Is highbrow something like "acquired taste"?
It is a taste acquired when a man acquires the set of moral values that goes with it.
> Is highbrow "difficult to understand"?
If you do not possess those moral values, then it is impossible to understand. Likewise in this situation, the "highbrow" type will find it impossible to understand your culture because he will not have your moral values.
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
Live opera is subtitled.
Thinking games? We've got tons of strategy games, puzzle games, and adventure games. On top of that many other genres include puzzles, sometimes difficult ones.
Movie quality storylines and settings and acting? A good number of RPGs and adventure games would fall into this, with huge, thought out histories and well developed personalities. Just have a look at The Elder Scrolls or Xenosaga. Again, most other genres also have games that would fit these requirements with excellent acting, interesting stories, and fully developed societies and histories.
Perhaps people like the writer of the article are the problem, not the lack of respectable games.
They're kept busy with their monocoles, top hats, snuff buxes and making fun of poor people.
Many games appeal to the reptilian brain. It's not easy to fit highbrow content into such a framework. That is not to say it can't be done, but the fact that it hasn't been done isn't really surprising.
Hideo Kojima has made some (arguable) masterpieces in the Metal Gear Solid games that delve into many subjects that such things considered highbrow in music, etc. do as well.
Games (and for that matter anime in America and other places) are often not taken seriously by older generations of today because these people are unfamiliar with them, and have the perception that such things are for children (or simply those who haven't developed a sense of "taste"). When these generations are replaced by those who grew up as an audience to these games, you might see such a trend.
However, if the focus is still being put on the power of the new technology instead of the content of the games, Kojima's masterpieces will only be considered part of what we have already in games: the "classics". Are these "highbrow"? That is a matter of perception.
Remember, jazz, blues, rock...all these were considered low brow art forms, because the people judging them didn't have the understanding of cultural context. They couldn't make valid assessments of the expression of the art form. People who don't understand computers and religious conservatives? I don't think the ignorant and the bigoted are the right people to judge a genera that has produced some of the most shocking anti-cultural messages of our time.
After playing civilization, I understand the war in the Middle East. Its not that we can't find alternative fuel, its that if China and the Soviets, didn't have oil, they could never wage a successful long term war required to topple western powers. It is tactical. I'm sure a lot of people playing civ have made this same realization.
GTA is another great example. Ask the question, "What the world would be like with out opportunity to make money legitimately?" Couple the result with few repercussions of our actions and you get and ugly world. You can try to imagine it, but with GTA you can experience it. Just like movies like A Clock Work Orange are graphic, yet high brow, GTA asks as relevant questions as the modern music and media establishment....it is just that people don't like what we are asking.
Todd
-Todd
Put down the sig, and step away from the computer.
No, wait. I was thinking of Bizarro world. In the world I live in, if games were actually culturally insignificant then School Boards, City Councils, and State Legislators wouldn't even be aware they existed.
They're a bit old but I thought games like Planescape: Torment and Deus Ex would be good examples of "high brow" games. And if you know Deus is not pronounced "doose" extra points to you.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
There are no high brow video games because there are no highbrow gamers. Face it, if you play video games, you've got the attention span of a goldfish. Simple really.
On the brighter side, give it a generation or two though, eventually DOOM 2 will be considered the height of culture.
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I'm an admitted elite gamer. I'm very picky about what I'll play and I only buy a couple of games a year. That includes board and card games. I bought the first pack of Magic cards at my hobby store. I played "diceless" roleplaying. I'm a snob.
Ok, enough credentials.
The fact is that game producers are just making either knock-offs of popular games or iterations of their own games. Oh look, another WoW. Oh look, another FPS Quake. Yes, they keep making these games better, but honest, I had fun the first five years playing. I don't need another FPS.
Bore me more.
The one game that looks good on the horizon is Spore.
So until then, I'll keep playing chess variants and Blood Bowl. And being a snob.
Exlcuding the movie that I think Chris Robert's must have been smoking some strongy wacky tobaccy while making - Wing Commander is an absolute classic. Only a moron would not consider it "high brow" - it tells a much better story across it's first 4 games than even Peter Jackson could manage in 9 movies!
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Your answer lies within the following book:3 47914-4633758?v=glance&n=283155
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1886411840/102-6
There are also some insights in "Chris Crawford on Game Design" as well, but I think you will find "The Art of Interactive Design" more closely relating to your question.
As for a solution, Chris has been working on that for the last 15 years or so. He has a free engine out you can play around with to create interactive stories, but it uses a new language which has kind of a steep learning curve, but it is very powerful once you know it.
For games to take the next step in interactivity we will require a complete change in mindset of what a game is, and people just aren't ready for that, yet...
Half Life 2 is definitely "high brow." A look at the number of forum posters that don't "get it," even on this site, are proof. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are also probably in that category. Spore will probably receive a great deal more critical praise than sales. It's rare, but they're out there.
To summarize the brilliant and nuanced argument of our critic friend at Gamasutra: videogames are not recognized by the bourgeois, therefore videogames need to be bourgoise.
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?
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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, I at least think that The Remains of the Day and Howard's End 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
So relax a little, it's art remember? :) Everyone's going to have their own take.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Obvious contenders such as Civilization and SimCity aside, one "high brow" game in the most traditional sense is Eidolon's Millennium Auction from 1994.
MA is an auction game featuring many classic objets d'art like the Mona Lisa, contemporary (a la 90's) knick knacks like Bill Clinton's saxiphone, and fictional pieces from the 'future' like sculptures from the far-off 2004. You assume the persona of one of several hoity toity up-and-ups and bid against your peers for the most valuable collection at the end of the day. You can speak with the others for gossip and tips, watch or read the news, and even chat with the unassuming janitor whose eye for detail may save your billionaire bacon with insightful observations.
I have no idea why but I found this game to be REALLY fun. It is pretentious through and through in style, but the game is aware of how seriously it takes itself and fleshes out every little detail in creative and informative prose, animation, dialogue, and twice-baked voice acting. Even the interface is expertly crafted as there is always a secondary quick action to zip to the desired area or screen or skip cool but lengthy animations.
The graphics are dated by today's standards but are not ugly. The surrealism of the whole truly multimedia experience melds the sights, sounds, and text into one cohesive experience that makes anyone feel like a tycoon of tomorrow with too many buckazoids to burn. Single player mode is challenging and multiplayer is a real treat. Either way, you are rewarded for taking your time, gossiping with your peers, researching news, and staying on the ball.
I think this is the kind of game that can be enjoyed by white, blue, and no collars alike. It's a little like the Monopoly of tomorrow where culturally significant baubles are collectables to be traded indescriminately like pogs. This woefully forgotten underdog would be a real hit at presidential tupperware parties if it were to be rereleased. Fortunately it's still kicking around on eBay (ironically?) and other online retailers for pennies.
I always felt that Planescape: Torment was high-brow. It's a game that is very text-heavy and wouldn't be enjoyed by a typical action-oriented gamer. Although you always end the game in the same place, you can get there various good and wicked ways. There are many moral quandries, and the entire game revolves around assuming the role of a man who has done horrendous evil. As the game unRavels, you realize the extent of malice your character has displayed, and how it has ruined the lives of people around you. Many decisions are ambiguous -- you do not choose good or evil, but try to find the best path among many imperfect paths.
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
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
If you mean 'highbrow' as in 'character/emotion driven,' he's right, and it's because the state of videogames as a narrative medium is pretty primitive.
We arguably have our Birth of a Nation in GTA:Vice City, but nobody's pushed the conventions it introduced much further yet. Perhaps some parts of some MMOs would count, particularly early Ultima Online, but it might be a couple of decades before videogames really hit their stride as an Art-with-a-captial-A form.
Most IF'ers disdain any graphics, sound, etc: the sentiment has a religious as well as aesthetic side. This keeps production costs low but requires vastly greater quality (in terms of story, program stability) than most mass market games achieve (more than they could achieve, probably, by simply hiring programmers.) Passion is the basic qualification, before technical ability even matters.
Well, highbrow is often associated with - at least in my mind - those that have too much money and too little common sense. Games themselves don't cater to that audience, although there was a time when gaming itself was somewhat of a more exclusive clique (usually for those that didn't belong to those high-held social circles).
However, as far as gaming goes, I'd say that you're more likely to have the actual hardware (custom X-boxes, high-rodded PC rigs with custom cases, etc) that has the exclusiveness for the platinum-toilet crowd than the games themselves.
Even video games' most recent media relative, film, arguably took decades before it fragmented into high/low brow poles. The pre-requisites for this meant having standardized formats, distribution models, and exhibition models (not to mention more accessible or "democratized" means of production). With game developers and console manufacturers constantly raising the technical bar before socially/culturally conscious game artists can catch up economically, you will not see enough diversity for a high/low brow distinction. Although I consider someone like Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) to be an analog for the Spielberg's of the film world, the Godards out there are working instead with new media at large as the interface of the conventional video game combined with the industrial complex in place precludes any external innovation, artistry, or deviation in form. For anyone who wishes to be better equipped to understand the topic question, I highly recommend Lev Manovich's The Language of New Media.
There needs to be a secret "I completed PS:T"-handshake that we can use over the internet to smirk at each other in superiority over the mindless FPS- and WoW-playing hordes.
Show me a game where you run around museums throwing grenades and shooting at Mozarts and Pavarotti monsters.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Actually, I think the idea behind the summary has it backwards: in the 1960s and 70s, music, movies, and other forms of media and entertainment required a physical commitment of some sort, either by attending the show, owning the vinyl, buying the book, etc.
Now let's forget the term "highbrow" and instead substitute "niche", which more closely defines the species we are looking for: a form of entertainment with a limited but strong audience.
In the old days form, a niche market could be created by a physical community - a specialist bookstore, arthouse theater, independent record store, etc. And once catalog mailings sprung up, guess what? All the brick and mortar stores dumped all their independent books, movies, and records into catalogs and only left the hits in the aisles.
Video games, since their earliest days, have had an alternate method of delivery: the Internet. And niche games have clearly served themselves better by using the Internet as a delivery mechanism: platform-independence, low development costs, and an easy way to generate a community.
Now music and video have their own low-entry methods of delivery: YouTube, MySpace, GarageBand, Google Video, etc all give self-budgeted filmmakers and musicians an opportunity to show off their talents.
The key difference is that video games require much more education and technical knowhow to create than a book, a video, or a piece of music. The difference between the greatest director or producer of all-time and a guy with a camera or a microphone in his garage is great, but not nearly as great as the difference between an expert programmer and a guy with a computer.
So while music, movies, books, and most other content benefit from the Long Tail, the other barrier to entry (technical knowhow) keeps out most people (who might have highbrow ideas) from joining the game developer industry.
Now, forgetting t
also Ico and Deus Ex, as noted a jillion times. And FF7 and later, depending on just what "Highbrow" means to you.
I haven't seen any in a while, but since the kid, I haven't really had a chance to stay current.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Because reading wikipedia directly is more fun than playing an encylopedic game.
Because listening to classical music is more fun than having to pass a stage to hear more.
Because discussing Sorbonne philosophers is more fun than hearing their words from silly characters.
The definition of "highbrow" is that it is intellectually engaging and that is why people enjoy/partake in it. Games are generally less intellectually engaging and seek escapism instead. To encapsulate "highbrow" into a less engaging format would be to dilute the reason that people engage in "highbrow" pastimes to begin with.
If you're really after highbrow, you're going to take the direct route and go right to the sources (or, from another perspective, the destinations). You're not going to go by way of an indirect, distortive, incomplete route. To do so would be... well... not very highbrow.
I think well-done puzzle/adventure games like Riven and classic strategy games like chess are about as highbrow as anyone is ever going to get in computer gaming.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
There's a simple reason and it's to do with acceptance. Take for instance animation. Generally speaking Western cultures up until recently animation was considered a childish thing, because on the whole animation was made mainly for kids. If you look at Japan to take an obvious example, animation is not simply aimed at children, nor are comics. They are cross generation mediums which appeal to people in Japan of many ages. There isn't the same snobbery to animation by adults as there is here.
However our attitude towards animation is changing, in part due to the adult themed animations coming from Asia. With deep searching themes and adult discussions of sometimes very tough subjects these are certainly not Mickey goes to the beach animes.
It's the same with games. In the future games will gain a foothold among an adult audience. Our generation might be the one leading that assault, as we are so completely embedded in a gaming culture. However these things will take time. Don't expect it to take place over night.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
How about Art Tag? The premise is that the player is a vandal, let loose in an art museum with one spraypaint can. The object of the game is to deface the highest value amount of art before the can runs out. The player would necessarily learn about various artists, the value of their paintings, and what works are housed in various museums around the world. The opportunity for expansion packs would be new museums, all of which can be kept up-to-date via a subscription. The player would need to dodge security, visitors, etc. Perhaps he/she could ride a skateboard as well.
It would upset parents and high-brow types, it can be subscription-based, and the player learns about great works of art. Sounds like a goldmine to me.
Sadly, lucas has given that up.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
What about chess? I had computer chess on a Timex. Chess isn't a highbrow game?
TFA must be discounting the intellectual dimention of the word "highbrow" ("Of, relating to, or being highly cultured or intellectual: They only attend highbrow events such as the ballet or the opera.") and zeroing in on the cultural aspects.
Again, chess is popular? Trivial? Disposable?
Of course, he did say "almost". Have a peek at television; it was a vast wasteland in 1962 and it's still a vast wasteland; even channels like Discovery and PBS now share in Fox's lowbrow qualities.
Does TV Guide ask "Does television have an image problem compared to other popular media, and how do we fix it?" No; it has "cultural credibility" because they've been around a long time; movies even longer (and name a highbrow movie, and if you say "gay cowboys" I'll not agree) and have even more "cultural credibility", books even longer and music the longest.
Videogames, by contrast, have only been in existance since the late 1960s and nobody outside a university ever saw any video game at all until the 70s (Pong). It was only a short 30 years ago when video game machines started hitting the public's eye.
It's a non-problem posed in a non-journal by a non-thinking hack writer. Move along, nothing to see here...
The Last Express was an amazing (and also very innovative) adventure game. It had a great story, quality acting (rotoscoped into a unique pen-and-ink art style) and real-time gameplay. It was also well before its time, and despite being a critical success it was also a commercial failure, just like most "highbrow" movies.
I think The Last Express qualifies as a highbrow game by the standards of TFA. It is certainly an unusual subject matter for a video game -- the last ride of the Orient Express at the close of WWI. I learned a lot about the period just by playing the game. And the attention to detail was fantastic -- I ended up giving my copy away to a non-gamer girlfriend of mine, just because of her interest in trains. And there were truly amazing moments in it. I still remember the closing credits to this day: an animated map of Europe, where you could see the borders changing from before WWI to present day. I had no idea until that moment that the borders of countries were so malleable -- until that point I thought that the map was pretty fixes, with the occasional change due to war. In fact, the map of Europe has changed pretty much continuously over the last century.
If you like adventures and want to try a "highbrow" game, you could do worse than trying The Last Express if you can still find a copy.
Consider the following five forms of art: literature, music, film, painting, and video games.
Everyone can paint.
Almost everyone can make music (everyone can clap their hands, most can hum, a good majority can sing on-key.)
About the same number of people can do film (witness the cameraphone / YouTube craze.)
Slightly less than everyone can do literature (assuming literacy is the standard for literature.)
But who can make a video game?
It requires a combination of computer literacy, logic, programming knowhow, AND some knowledge of usability to make a game that could be considered playable, even in the crudest sense.
So to actually create even the most basic video game requires a level of competency far above creating the most basic literature, painting, music, or even film. And the learning curve for it is exponential. In short, there will always be a lot more artists, musicians, filmmakers, and writers than computer programmers. And by the simple law of averages, there'll be more "highbrow" artists, musicians, filmmakers, and writers.
And what's worse, is that everyone can have a highbrow idea, and convert it into pseudocode.
An experiment: ask someone to describe how they would program a game of tic-tac-toe. Almost everyone can do it, it's just like the rules: One player is X, one player is O, play alternates back and forth, and after each play, you check to see if there is a row, column, or diagonal of Xs or Os.
But then ask them to code it, and most would balk. They know the ideas, but not the syntax. They know the logic, but not the programmatic flow. They know what recursion, instantiation, and nested conditionals are, but not how to code for it.
So really, the issue is that most people problably have highbrow game ideas, but abandon them at the sheer thought of implementing them, whereas a person with a highbrow idea for a piece of music, a novella, or a sculpture might just jump into it.
Barriers to entry aren't always just money and time.
The problem is that "highbrow" is not defined
I agree with your point, but my theory...
I think "High Brow" means inaccessible. It's a socio-enconomical class marker; In many ways, it is often legitimate.
The upper socio-enconomic classes have more money to educate and entertain themselves. These people thus are introduced to a variety of forms and influences. Sometimes, allowing them to develop a more 'nuanced' taste. This has nothing to do with the person's natural abilities, which are equal across classes. This is all nurture.
The elite, now 'learnt', begin to take interest in different things. Everyone else 'below' this elite socio-economic class begin to follow suite because it is ingrained in us to 'improve' our socio-economic class. It's a bain hardest felt by the middle class.
So why 'dig' inaccessible things? Exclusivity is one yes. But these forms of art may also simply provide enjoyment to people who prefer to invest more into their enjoyment, and choose to do so in that fashion.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Face it, when you have pathetic poser kids from the upper and middle classes playing the wannabe role, and trying to emulate the worst of a lower-class element, paying for the games, who is going to target some other audience?
Then, you have the lower-classes paying for games instead of shoes and food for the kids, why wouldn't game manufacturers target them?
Oh, add 'Age of Sail' to the growing list of 'high brow' games. But note, none of the high brow games listed here have gotten the sales that GTA have gotten. Not while white kids, whose moms drive BMWs, think they are the new gangsta second coming of Tupac.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Video games aren't kicked around by pols because they're low-brow. If they did that, they'd lose 90% of their constituencies. Video games are kicked around because they're a convenient whipping boy for demagogues who want to appeal to the 'think of the children!' crowd. It's no different than Elvis and Rock 'n' Roll were back in the day--a convenient scapegoat for shysters who want your vote and money.
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.'
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
- A Mind Forever Voyaging
Admittedly it's not a very long list, but it's accurate, complete, and most importantly of all, non-empty.Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The only highbrowing going on is the constant pissing contest over CPUs and GPUs.
in my opinion, games where "the game is the thing" are the most highbrow art you'll find in gaming. look at the arcade classics: they didn't tell a story, they usually didn't have defined characters, all it was, was gameplay, distilled to its purest element. inevitably, you'd lose, the goal of early arcade games was to simply put that off while trying to make as high a score as you can. kind of like life, don't you think?
Darwinia is an example of a highbrow game. So are r@guelikes.
What are you looking for? A videogame based on New Yorker cartoons?
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
After all, Postal 1 and 2 represent modern-day American values, attitudes, and aspirations. What more could you possibly want in a video game? Yea, verily, Postal 2 itself will be forever enshrined as the pinnacle of digital high-brow entertainment!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off with my shovel to the store. The wife wants me to pick up a quart of milk.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Rembrandt is a famous dutch artist and his "Nachtwacht" (nightwatch) is a classic. It is also a 100% commercial piece, made to order. So is the Mona Lisa and many other famous pieces of arts.
So what do we got in culture? Knob jokes and made to order artworks. Woopee! Most of the composers composed to the taste of the crowd being little different then say a current commercial rap artist. Art for the sake of money.
Yes there have been artists who worked for the sake of art. They usually died poor and early and miserable. By that standard EA should be producing future classics if only they made working conditions even worse.
There have been games wich have touched my emotion, the simplest is perhaps Planescape Torment but another game was a godsim game where you controlled the evolution of clay animation represented creatures. Ones that didn't meet your standards were mass killed with a nasty zap. At the same time I played it a tv docyu played on WW2 killing camps. That made me think. I don't think the game designers had it in mind but the game made a connect in my mind and that counts in my book.
Will in a 100 years time games like Planescape Torment or others still be remembered. Don't know. The point about classic art is that it still survives in roughly the same form. Music especially we can still listen to 1000 years later as long as someone keeps the notes save. But can we even today play games made a mere decade ago?
Games age badly. While pong survives because new versions are allowed with uptodate graphics a planescape torment just sits there with graphics that today just hurt the eyes.
No this isn't juse being shallow, nowadays shakespeare plays are no longer played with candlelight, we use modern stages, modern instruments and artworks have been cleaned up and restored.
But I agree with you, this guy is just pretentious. Merchant Ivory movies as high art? Then I got the game for you. Myst. Thanks for playing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's all about market segmentation. The high brow market is not as large as the 15-25 year old males who want to see the movie on opening weekend. So you're upside is limited. On the other hand, it's cheap to produce films for them. Seriously, how much did Vanya on 42nd Street cost to make?
The sweet spot is a high end of the middlebrow segment, that will flock to a movie like Sense and Sensibility to see Ang Lee's take a novel they had to read in college. You don't blow huge amounts of money on post production, don't have any megastars unless they're anti-slumming for some artistic cred, in which case they aren't charging on the same payscale as they do for Titanic.
I'm not sure that there is an analgous way to produce a cheap, high brow game.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A good friend of mine is a very high profile literature critique here in germany. We're less than two decades apart and, aside from her being a professional critique, very much on the same level. We talk the very same talk about most things. I've studied art and design and more or less know my way around contemporary art and read my share of contemporary beletristics.
When it comes to video games, I'm on my own. This is a TOTALLY different world. It's like explaining brain surgery to a cow. Won't work. I set up her last two computers (her new one is a Mac Mini) and she barely manages to utelize it properly. And that's only because she's got an educated and verbaly dexterous friend who also happens to be a computer expert and won't refrain from nagging at her when he notices that she's not maintaning the minimum standard of proper order on her filessystem with the reviews she writes.
Truth is: Nobody in his right mind, when having looked into it, would deny that video games are indeed a highly complex and demanding form of art. It's the 'looking into' and 'knowing your way around the field' part that counts here.
When our generation and our children are the seniors in charge it will be just as much a credible art. Just as the music of the rolling stones is today, because all the crazy hippies from back then are the old conservative farts of today. And then you'll have us raving about FF and World of Warcraft to the yongsters and of the true art of video games.
Bottom line:
'Highbrow or not' is usually just a generation thing. Pure and simple.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Unfortunately, the culture wars are being waged by politicians looking to agitate voters, make it appear like they're actually helping families. The groups above does not represent any significant portion of the population in so that it would make a difference in either public perception or this culture war. Sure, a few of these people might learn to enjoy video games and become the David Byrne of video games or something. But given the immense financial success of video games over the past generation, it's unlikely video games are in any kind of "danger."
There are gems, and then there is the majority of video games out there. The gems will always exist, and so will the slop. Just like movies and music. The fact that he ignores that highbrow games exist by saying that the mainstream doesn't know about them stinks. He argues that Opera, for example, even if not widely appreciated is considered to be highbrow, whether the opera is good or not. So what he's arguing for then? An arbitrarily assigned category of games that's considered hoity-toity? No, the industry is a juggernaut. We'll occasionally get our unique and wonderful games like Shadow of The Colossus, Myst, Tertis, and so on. Whether they're highbrow or not doesn't so much matter, as long as they're good.
There's another difference between video games and other forms he discusses. Video games are the only product where the consumer is fully integrated into the experience. Control is yielded to the player. This means that video games, at a much higher rate than movies or music must display, and benefit from, technical excellence. That is to say a well crafted game, such as Midnight Club III, Hulk:UD, Black, Gran Turismo 4, God of War, etc . . . can more than make up for their lack of thought-provoking content with their tight controls, innovative gaming concepts, and just sheer fun of PLAYING!
--What, you ain't know about them country fried sessions?
I'm not sure but I don't think this guy has played too many games out there. I mean there are tons of examples of "Highbrow games" and even genres. Just look at the whole Adventure Game genre for the computer. Most of the stories are very "highbrow" dealing with thinking and puzzles rather than shooting things.
The fact is Video Games are an easy target right now as was Beavis and Butthead were easy targets when they were popular. People can't take the blame for their own mistakes themselves so they have to blame it on something else entirely.
I didn't see anyone mention chess, its the one game that people my dad's age can play online or with the computer and not look odd doing so. It's the ultimate class-bridging game. Of course, bridge, solitaire, etc. are all relatively high-brow as well, and I'd be considerate of Monopoly, etc and other online board games. So it's not that they don't exist, they're just mostly translations of "classic" games to the new format of computer/online.
stuff |
Would you let your step-brother go to the ballet or a museum, even if he can't fully appreciate the experience?
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.
Beyond Good and Evil Indigo Prophecy
Well okay, there are some, like polo :)
But the bottom line is that most video games are based around a try/die/repeat cycle. Furthermore, most video games are based around a *frustrating* try/die/repeat cycle. They're the kind of thing that a kid with endless free time can excel at, but someone for with a busier schedule they get old quick. There are exceptions, yes, but the vast majority of the big hits are like this. So most games are told like toys to an audience that wants toys.
You may be technically correct on the definition of "high brow" but read his question again.
He wants an "elite form". He says "light popular entertainment is trivial, disposable, and therefore culturally insignificant". I stand by my criticism. He's a big pretentious gas bag.
People who want elite, culturally significant forms of entertainment are snobs. Entertainment is for entertainment, not for social-climbing, ego-expanding elitism.
Wait until DX10 comes out ...
Where is my high-brow porn?
Brokeback Mountain?
Like several other people have mentioned, the term high brow depends on what you make of it for any different group. Most high brow groups tend to be elitists who look down their nose at everyone around them. And there are plenty of gamers that do that, but instead of pretentious british accents they mangle their text with |\|umb3rs f0r l3773rz.
A little off-topic, perhaps, but I always had a self-righteous distain for comic books (while simultaneously, and paradoxically, enjoying some newspaper comics, i.e. Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbes). I nurtured this snobbery in myself until I read Scott McCloud's excellent book, Understanding Comics.
It takes a highbrow view of a much disparaged art form. I highly recommend it to recovering snobs like me.
[[Jdapnc. O,..y (Nuts...keyboard stuck in Dvorak mode again.)
Then won't those same games be a couple thousand dollar a piece?
I mean we can make games for niches but they still have to break even. While not every game has to be a GTA. We also have to remain true to the fact that we arn't an industry where people throw away money. We have to sell games to remain in business. So a game that will appeal to only a few people will not be a popular choice. People just won't throw money away, something Hollywood seems to do more each year.
On the other side though there's a lot of "high brow" games if you're accepting them being popular. Sims 2, Spore, and other games as people have meantion that move towards art. But the fact is you're still making games to be solid, Not making games as art. If you want to make art, make art. Games are entertainment, something movies were once and as such they exist only to be sold or bought. If you want a game to be made to the point that only a few would accept it or buy it then you'd also have to understand the converse in that the game itself would cost many times what it currently does, to the point of costing close to one thousand dollars. At that point those buying it are buying something other then entertainment, but the fact is no one is willing to risk that much on such a venture because the return is likely non existant.
We had our Merchant Ivory -- they were called Looking Glass, and they died on the vine. They had good sales, but just not good enough.
Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief, Deus Ex. Their games were and are works of art. Thief practically wraps up the entire history of western civilization and culture and packs it into one sprawling city, and with a wonderful plot to boot.
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
/takes a puff from his pipe
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.
... because Half-Life, Baldur's Gate I & II, the Age of X series, etc. are all lowbrow games. Lest we forget Oblivion, one of the most amazingly beautiful and compelling games ever made.
Blanketing all games with a "low brow" label is pretty easy to do when you are too lazy to actually play a good cross section of games to get a fair perspective.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up, but alas I don't. While highbrow may be an elietest and pretentious term it does contain a kernel of truth which is that cultural artifacts should attempt to touch our deepest emotions and have qualities that transcend the time and place where they were written and not just appeal to the puerile base glandular responses of excitement, hate, or lust. For example a novel like Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky makes us reflect on deep issues of spirituality, the rights of the basest and most vile people, and what it means to be a decent person in a world of strife and conflict. This IS different than a t.v. program like E or a video game like Grand Theft Auto which mainly appeal to twitch and glandular responses and not only don't involve reflection but actively discourage reflection.
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.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
I really think many of the "high brow" moments in games are deep within the games themselves.
I wouldn't say NO highbrow games have been made:
Planescape torment (what changes the nature of a man?)
Also some games while not highbrow certainly get one thinking. Even if they appear cute and stupid on the outside. For instance Tales of Symphonia for the gamecube has a philosophical bits abou war and peace the closer you get to the end of the game. I'm sure other games have 'hidden gems' and hit some important themes that get us to think a bit even if briefly.
Speaking as a film major, Merchant Ivory aren't what I'd call highbrow. They're more safe and middlebrow, precisely like many games.
I think a primary problem is interactivity. If you're trying to create something truly important and artistic that conveys some complex ideas, then each element of your medium should be critical to the expression. In the cases of most writers and artists, a non-interactive movie or book or painting is more direct. Adding interactivity in most cases just makes it a game and is simply to make it more entertaining. Most books turned into games seem like cheapened versions to me.
The trick is to make the interactivity integral to telling the story or making your point, and that's hard. To date I think the only things that really come close to "highbrow" games (by his vague definition) are simulators, perhaps because they're educational. He mentions a couple, but I was also thinking of flight and historical simulators too.
And I think it was a mistake to mention comics because it's really a counter-example in some ways. They have been legitimized in their own way with Raymond Pettibon, Daniel Clowes, etc. It's a different kind of highbrow.
I also think the discounting art movies hurts the credibility of the article. A super-formal, "old man" kind of high brow is not the only kind. And there are games that fit into this artsy category, like Mel Chin's "Knowmad" or Cory Arcangel's work. Is this not high brow?
You're gonna hate me for this... but there's a GREAT open-source version of Civ that runs flawlessly on both Windows and Linux. Customizable graphics and rules, awesome networked play, and the same crack-habit addictiveness! :-)
http://www.freeciv.org/
My bicyles
Oh, I loved that game! Broke it when I got the tyrannosaurus and kicked everything's butts. Now I have to go change my pants. Someone in SEGA, please port "Rocket Jockey" to a console.
Anyone in the generation who played video games as children---knows how nostalgic certain games can be. Common, I wouldn't ever admit to playing a video game today (my high-brow crowed would scorn), but I do own a copy of The Legend of Zelda---and that is totally acceptable. If some NES games are acceptable in high-brow circles (while all current ones are excluded), doesn't this mean they are "high brow?" And yes, Myst was a great game; and I am not afraid to admit I played it through.
OK, first of all I have to confess that I didn't read all the other comments, so excuse me for repeating, if that would be the case. What, in my opinion, seems to be the problem is the interactivity and non-linearity of computer games. The characters, the environment (not only in a "physical" way) and the story itself need to be able to "fork" into different ones depending on the players actions, this is in my opinion what separates the media from other, like literature and film. In a more complex story, with more complex characters, it will get almost impossible to create and combine all these different paths. The only way I can think of to solve this is to create very dynamic games, a "simple" example could be The elder scrolls 4: Oblivion, and almost simulate the world. The games currently seen as "Highbrow" are either artistic in a very visual way or on the standard of a B-movie. To take an example of the latter. The metal gear solid series are often seen as rather complex games, story-wise, if you'd make a direct transfer of any of the games to another media, E.G. film, it might be able to compare with simplish Action films. And all of the games in the series are rather linear. What I think is needed to create more highbrow video games is to create tools, including game engines, that take care not only of the low-level graphics e.t.c. but also a lot more high level things, totally removing the "implementation level" or what ever you might like to call it. Some inspiration could be taken from projects such as squeak. As I see this probably doesn't have a huge commercial interest, although it should, this might be a project for the open source community.
Seems to me that Ernest Adams' terms of comparison are things that were popular before the dawn of the 21st century. By his definition, "high-brow" means something that came out before the year 1950. Can you blame games for being a young, growing industry? In the 60's, Beatles seemed loud and outrageous. Right now, 45 years later, they seem high-brow. At least to me. So if time is essential for something to become high-brow, I say, give it until 2025 and you'll have your high-brow video games. They'll have museums and libraries dedicated to Super Mario, Tetris and Sid Meier's Civ. And there will be an entire class of stuffy, pretentious elitists that will favour older games over newly developed forms of entertainment.
A Merchant Ivory video game would give the sense of deep satisfaction we feel when we reach the end of a great play or movie or novel, a long-lasting pleasure that the mere memory of the experience evokes years later.
Ideally, a video game should give a special, unique kind of pleasure, otherwise efforts and innovations in this field would be useless and superfluous. And frankly, I can't name one movie that compares with the feeling I get after 9 straight hours of Civ III, where an entire civilization grew, evolved and morphed before my eyes.
Microsoft put the "sucks" in "success".
Robot Odyssey is one of the all-time high-brow games, which is essentially a visual programming language (for robots), with encapsulation (chips)!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The myst series was highbrow. No quick action or shortcuts.
Where's our John Huston? Where's our Alfred Hitchcock? Where's our Sam Pickenpah? Kubrick? Speilberg? Capra? Copolla? Lynch (what I wouldn't give...)?
All we have are a bunch of Michael Bay's, Robert Zemekis's, and Paul Verhoven's.
The game industry needs to discover the possibilities of it's medium, like the golden age of film did decades before CG effects came around. When the industry can produce the rough equivalent of these artists, then we can start worrying about a Howard's End FPS to please the snoot.
Please don't mention Molyneaux, Spector, or even Wright as possibilities. Especially Molyneaux.
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
"A classic is something everyone wants to have played, but no one actually wants to play."
-- The other Dr. Phil
Because they would suck.
People are mentioning Civilization as an example of a high brow game, but it is mere beer-and-pretzel Gilbert and Sullivan compared to more intellectual games such as Imperialism (1997) -- an abstract game of 19th century strategy -- Europa Universalis II (2001) -- a wonderful game of 15th-19th century history with ~200 active countries and realistic diplomacy -- Crusader Kings (2004) -- a medieval dynasty simulator with inbreeding, inheritance, and assassination on a grand strategic map -- Victoria (2003) -- a seriously hardcore game of economy and realpolitik -- and Hearts of Iron II (2006) -- a WW2 war game of strategic envelopment, pincer movements, and blitzkrieg.
There are many other fine games, but these are the ones I think of when I think of sophisticated gameplay and claim to highbrow status.
My other body is also not wearing any.
I'm having a party at the yacht club this Sunday. I'm christening my new sloop. How would you like to mow my lawn.
Because nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. (Apologies to PT Barnum)
From the article...We need more games like that to help us win the culture wars
Your want to have video games be the front runner of your culture? screw = loose.
These are just meant as diversions, can you picture how many games of "watch our culture ebb and flow" would sell? besides our current raft of games is no more low brow than the most popular of sports
And there is a breaking point in the term game, if you make something that people are going to call a work of art that appeals to everyone and is so far past the usual game, I'm thinking your left with something that no one will know is a game. go look at some interactive installations or something, but I don't think you want games or comics (which by the way he should take a good long look at Fantagraphics and than go back and rewrite his editorial).
There are much MUCH worse movies out there than bad games (take the movie "Frogs" for example)There are also games that put movies' storys to shame. (Final Fantasy series, Elder Scrolls, and as mentioned multiple times already Shadow of the Collosus, and many others) I predict that eventually video games will become more mainstream than any other form of media.
I don't understand it but as the population increases, the high brow entertainment audience remains the same size or shrinks.
Then as costs increase (property tax, salaries, etc.), they go under.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
'. . .Where's Our Merchant Ivory?'
In Guildwars, visit the last merchant stall in the valley in
Old Ascalon. You'll need 200 gold and 10 planks of wood.
Happy to help.
The OP has the it backwards; there are no highbrow games because the medium lacks cultural credibility. The whole concept of "highbrow" work is based on a cultural collective judgement. The common culture doesn't yet accept games in general as an art form, so there's no basis to judge what's "high art" and what isn't.
Is it "Myst", with its stunning visuals, atmospheric quality, etc.? Or is it an RPG or adventure game with a deep and thoughtful story, like "Planescape: Torment"? Or is it simply gameplay classics like Tetris or Half-Life? Right now we lack the cultural framework to judge what's most important in defining a "great work" in this medium.
Titanic: Adventure Out Of Time; System Shock 1 and 2; The Total War Series (Rome, Medieval); Jane's Fleet Command (and Harpoon); Call of Duty; Marathon; Planescape Torment; Baldur's Gate; Politika (althought it didn't work half the time); most Tom Clancy shooters; Majestic; Bad Mojo (very stylin'); Falcon 4.0; those old Infocom text based adventures; Nocturne; Phantasmagoria; Kings' Quest Series... there's quite a few more.
Games I'm looking forward to play?
BioShock; Medieval: Total War2.
There are always games that require a good amount of thought; they're always outnumbered by the "common denominator" games. You just have to be discriminating with your entertainment dollar...
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
The reason games aren't respected by the lawmaker demographic is simple: Most people involved in the legislative process are around 40, usually pushing 50 or 60. Those people didn't experience gaming when they were young, and therefore it has no emotional or cultural value for them. It's likely that as the average year of birth among them increases, more senators and congressmen that were or are gamers are going to be involved with legislation surrounding it.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
Anyone remember the fabulous game "The 7th Guest"?
I I:_The_13th_Doll
Sadly this company bombed out after The 11th hour - as the sequel didn't sell enough to keep the company solvent.
These two games have such a following that a group of fans have got together to recreate the story, create a third game "The 13th Doll" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7th_Guest_Part_I
In my opinion this is what makes a highbrow game - a cult classic with a rabid fan following.
I think this debate will quickly become a philosophical, and may well lead to metaphysical arguments. As with the following questions: Are sports art? Is there art in sports? Is a slow-motion clip of M.Jordan dunking art? Is the execution of a football play art as is the exection of a ballet or musical? Is the comparison of sport (or game) to art legitimate or is it comparing apples to oranges? Is it possible to play a sport/game as an artist performs? How or how not? Why or why not? What is "artful play"? What is art? What is a game? (The field of aesthetics may contribute to this discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics). It might be a bit scary to realize that virtual killing is something we might consider beautiful...
To leave philosophy for a moment, there have been a few times when playing Unreal or UT when I'll pause for a moment to look at the level and be really surprised at how beautiful (and real) it looks. While improving "chrome" (graphics) continues to be a significant focus of games I do think that the time will come when what we see in games is almost indistinguishable from reality. Then, perhaps, we will play UT3K in the Louvre and I'll stop to be surprised by the Mona Lisa.
No highbrow games?!? You've obviously never seen Postal.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If there were merchant-ivory class games we'd have to come
up with lots of excuses for when people asked us to play with them.
http://www.askaninja.com/node/943
Highbrow art deals with serious issues in a serious way, as compared to lowbrow art, which panders to the masses who demand pure entertainment, the more brainless the better.
If a game doesn't make you think carefully about serious issues then it's not highbrow. It's as simple as that.
That means all games which are about racking up bodycounts are out. Puzzle games can make you think hard, but really, who cares about how many tiles you can line up in a row? That's not a serious issue, so that's out.
Games that are serious about character development and plot come closer to being highbrow. However, if in the end they're after pure entertainment they're lowbrow too.
I'd say games like Balance of Power, a geopolitical simulation, and maybe some serious educational games are probably as highbrow as games get. But even there, they don't necessarily achieve a status of highbrow art, they may just have highbrow aims.
Then there is the more difficult and more interesting question of what makes art great, not merely highbrow. But I'll save that for another post.
Sincerely,
Your Loving AC
My young grand-children play video games. As they become older, they are becoming bored with them and looking for more intellectual pursuits, including books and physical sports. They are finding live friends and enough outlets for their aggression on the sports fields, as they approach high school age. By the way, my modded XBox has never been used for games, but is an excellent media centre.
paleoflatus
As someone above expressed with Ico... Beyond Good and Evil had the low sales to show it was highbrow. :-) I think that PCs lend themselves to a higher form of entertainment, because you don't have to just slide a disk in, for the game to run (well, as often). With a PC, you can assume a certain level of sophistication to begin with.
[nt]
instead, I'm the homeless schizophrenic that you resent for being aimless. The in-tuned nameless, I am. I am that NGH. I am that NGH. I am that NGH. I am a negro. Yes, negro from necro, meaning death. I overcame it so they named me after it. And I be spitting at death from behind and putting "kick me" signs on it's back, because, I am not the son of Sha Clack Clack . I am before that. I am before. I am before before. Before death is eternity. After death is eternity. There is no death there's only eternity. And I be ridin' on the wings of eternity, like yah, yah, Sha Clack Clack.
"Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Do cellphone ringtones have an image problem compared to other popular media, and how do we fix it?
Game players tend to be geeks. The "good ol' boy your not as good as me because I fit in to this little box and you don't" shit doesn't work on geeks. People place the geek in the box because they are diffent. I'd like to think the difference is intelligence. That intelligence is what makes the geek smart enought not to fall for such an ignorant marketing ploy. Now jocks on the other hand...
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
What about Katamari Damacy, that's definiately a form of art. Dadaism mixed in with a bit of Post-modernism.
Or Metal Gear 2, now that's post modernism at its finest.
[VODAK - Apply Directly to the Mouth!] [VODAK - Apply Directly to the Mouth!] [VODAK - Apply Directly to the Mouth!]
Every time I hear someone equate highbrow to a series like Myst, I shudder. I see little difference between hack 'n slash versus having to solve some totally contrived logic puzzle.
Just because I don't want to shoot someone does not mean I desire a big book of sudoku. Not that I can't -- I'm quite good at them just like my Dad, but there is no motivation for me to.
Perhaps this is why I fall into the RPG category of gamers? Richard Garriott was my God.
To quote Tom Clancy: "I like writing. It's the most fun I've ever had at anything. You can build your own little world and -- like a kid with his toy trains, -- except instead of trains I have tanks and ships and airplanes and things... I get to make them do all the things I want them to do, and if I don't like the way things work out, I start again."
Couldn't have said it better myself!
(this is not a
Adams seems to start his piece with an assumption, namely that there are not "highbrow" games, and this has a connection with our "cultural credibility." To turn his question around, I'd posit, would he recognize a "highbrow" game if he were faced with one? He does admit "civilization" is going in the right direction, but seems to be deliberately obtuse about saying how far we've come. As James Paul Gee points out, video games are getting more complex, along with other forms of popular culture such as television programs. While I am hardly a Gee fan, I would argue complex and "highbrow" games are astoundingly popular, even if they don't look, sound, or smell like what Adams expects them to. Needless to say mere numbers or attempts at quantifying what a "highbrow" game would look like by comparisons against limp-wristed, trite, cliche period dramas of MERCHANT IVORY (caps intended) speaks volumes of his clumsy jabs at understandings of high vs. low art. Speaking of which his rather arbitrary determination of what exactly constitutes "highbrow" entertainment reminds me of Adorno, who famously lauded classical music while tossing the popular ("jazz") into the rubbish bin, fingers holding nose tighly shut as to keep out the foul smell of the (gasp) common man/woman. Adams is really about one step from coming out and saying, as Adorno does, that the vast majority can't appreciate truly great art. What he seems to push for is a lushly produced game that would cater to an elite. There is a contradiction here. I'm not convinced an "elite" game would be viable as he conceives it, or that an elite form would necessarily alter the public view of games. No longer do we have court artists hired by royalty, rather, games are supported by capitalism. Even gorgeous, massively produced cultural touchstones by definition have to sell well, either by larger numbers or an increased unit price, or be obsolete. The only source of "elite" support I can think of is as academic research into games. Strangely Adams dismisses the "serious games" movement as not viable, as it wouldn't fix the public view of games as childish. Additionally, Adams misunderstands how games are put together. Game budgets go into development, and are not spent exclusively on equipment and costumes to gorgeous locations to film people wearing prancing about wearing dusted wigs. Game budgets are also positively diminutive compared to movie budgets. Finally, even if the budgets were there, a computer-based experience simply cannot, aesthetically speaking, compete with a movie. Perhaps Adams needs to get on the phone with David Mugar and discuss some elite-friendly specialty hardware, a la Omni. I'll be waiting with a snifter of brandy and butler ready.
As said, there are quite a few. There's not as many as sports games, and they're not defined by a genre or a single publisher: but they exist. I consider myself a highbrow gamer. I cannot derive entertainment from games that don't stimulate me intellectually. This is a fairly difficult scrape considering the low number of high-brow games, but I'm content as is.
I think this article is a blow to their emergence, and it pisses me off. I thought journalists wrote about what they researched.
mmm... interesting.
Anyone remember Watchmen?. Moore and Gibbons' series played a big part in rehabilitating comics from being regarded as a junk medium. The made a point of using every literary device they knew in the series. They wanted a graphic novel that had every hallmark of a "proper" novel. Along with Art Speigleman's Maus and Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, they changed the way that comics are regarded in the west.
On the other hand, Watchmen is as fine a superhero story as anyone is ever likely to read. They did it without abandoning the format or the conventions of the genre. So maybe we can find some similar fusion in the gaming world.
Is Gary Larson's The Far Side less than brilliant because it lacks plot development? Of course not. Nevertheless, it's possible to have a comic that works on many more levels than Larson's did - if only because of the restrictions of the one-panel format.
That's fair enough...
I think, ultimately, a computer game should aim to engage the player on all those levels. Which is to say it should have the involvement of Tetris, the depth of civ, the story of Planescape: Torment, the realism of Far Cry and in the process hit as many literary and dramatic benchmarks as it can.
Not becuase Tetris is a bad game - it isn't. But because we can take the medium so much further.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
can't help laughing at the thought of that ;-P
not an avid gamer myself but here is my view...
"highbrow" games don't exist because the highbrow ppl don't like playing them! honestly how many people which in your opinion is upper class and posh enjoys playing video games? they all have better things to do to pass their spare time (theatre, opera, have their little socializing parties etc) then sitting infront of a PC pressing buttons.
how a game is perceived has nothing to do with whether if the game is intellectually stimulating or artistic (there are many games that are like that that the guy who wrote TA prob didn't know existed) but all to do with what sort of ppl likes it.
Liking Shakespeare and Mozart and enjoying blowing up aliens aren't mutually exclusive pasttimes for a person to have, but if you're one, then you're definitely not qualified to say whether something is highbrow or not, thats the job of the elite (and who cares what they think is 'proper' entertainment).
Sure, pre-CU there were enough people out there who macroed their way through the game but if you wanted to play a game that required some intelligence, SWG offered that. But like anything that Sony Online Entertainment does, it's been nerfed into banality.
The highbrow designers are right where they should be, designing for Japanese kids who live two decades beyond the stuff us Merkins get.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, etc.? These were great adventure stories. For that matter, most of Nintendo's games are too -- think of every Mario, Zelda, or Metroid game ever made. As games go, these are high-brow entertainment; they aren't catering to boob-obsessed 15 year-old boys, like the DOA franchise, and they aren't catering to violence-obsessed 13-35 year-old men either.
I'll even attempt a defense of GTA. Perhaps it isn't fine art, but as a social commentary, it definitely has its moments -- and hasn't social commentary been taken as art (or at least non-low-brow entertainment), at times? Look at various philosophically and/or politically-motivated comedy shows (Daily Show, Colbert Report, late-night comedy TV, etc.) and cartoon strips (Doonesbury, Calvin & Hobbes, Boondocks, etc.).
Now, Mortal Kombat doesn't have much to offer in terms of artfulness -- it's just 2 guys beating the crap out of each other, with no pretenses of high-brow snobbery...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Considering that video games are not even near a century-old form of expression, I think we must compare the current works with those of cave paintings: would anyone consider those art in the same way they consider the Cistene Chapel a work of art? Of course not, because cave paintings are some of the first man-made forms of visual expression. Do we really consider any visual depictions older than 2-3000 years "highbrow" or even "art"? Likewise, we shouldn't be worried that there are no true works of video game art (there may be, but if not the inexistance of them should not be a cause for concern).
If that were true Porkies 3 would cause the same level of reflection as War and Peace. Obviously this isn't true and it's the act of reflecting on our humanity as a potentially life changing experience that differentiates art from entertainment. Unfortunately this has gotten tied up in all sorts of nasty class warfare but that doesn't have to be the case, anyone can read Shakespeare and really understand it, or hear hear Mozart and say understand the development of a sonata if it is explained patiently and non boringly by a good teacher. Further I would say many things are art that might not normally be classified as art for example Sonic Youth's new CD Rather Ripped contains lyrics on what relationships mean in the age of eye blink attention spans that makes you reflect seriously while also rocking. Public Enemy's Fear of Black planet tells some of the best stories of ghetto life ever put into any medium. Art doesn't have to boring!!! But it is not mere entertainment like Britney Spears that encourages a person into either mawkish sentimentality or sheer ape like lust using cliched words that bring nothing new into the world. There is a difference between entertainment and art whether you chose to acknowledge it or not, if you limit yourself to strictly entertainment you are missing out on experiences that can move you at the deepest level inexpressible in language.
Few video games cause that sort of transformation, perhaps Myst that I have seen. I'd also be interested in seeing the interactive 3 d world the Residents created in the mid 90s but I have never actually seen it.
Having a non relativist view that differentiates good art from bad art may be controversial, but I firmly believe that people who have been exposed to both and make an effort to understand both entertainment and art will be able to differentiate the two EVERY time though it may be difficult to explain to people what the difference is they none the less they get it.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
There are no video game makers that are compareble to Merchant Ivory, but Atlus would be an excellent example of David Lynch-like video game makers. Or possibly David Croneberg. NIS' strategy RPGs have a lot of the charm and wonderful visual sense of Tim Burtons. Rockstar's GTA series have the same sort of raw power and black humor that you would see in a Sam Peckinpah or Quentin Tarantino movie. Actually, I take that back; there have been "Merchant-Ivory" video games: the Oddworld games. They have beautiful designs, spiffy graphics, well designed gameplay, and like most Merchant-Ivory movies, are no goddamn fun at all. Like Howard's End and A Room With a View, the Oddworld games have all the ingredients for a superior product, but they're somehow less than the sum of their parts.
no entering mystic serial numbers
Let me assure you, the ol' days were not as good as you seem to remember :-)
I remember playing some air traffic controller game on my TRS-80 (in glorious 64x16 monochrome ASCII). Not only did I have to wait about 6 minutes for it to load in from the audio cassette (fiddling with the levels to try & make it work), but then I had to enter the mystic serial number to unlock it each time.
The "serial number" was a challenge/response code, looked up from a grid of numbers and letters. To avoid easy copying, the grid was printed in faded ink on dark red paper - and then glued to a cardboard cylinder.
Of course, the grid wasn't exactly huge, it'd probably take about 20 minutes to copy it out by hand, so the whole thing was merely an exercise in ineffective paranoia. The game wasn't even all that much fun.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
In the same way that Advertisers for the Movie, Music, Television, Radio, Internet, Newspaper, and Telephone industries assume that we are all dumbsh*ts who will buy just about anything, the video game industry has adopted the same philosophy. They appease the Lowest Common Denominator, that group of people who in the real world make our lives miserable.
The LCD is also the reason shows like American Idol are so popular, why technological convergence is de-evolving (putting TV on Telephones and Computers, something the more enlightened computer savvy have stated we would rather do without), and making advertisements and gossip part of the evening news (newsinfotainment: giving back rubs to big corporations by naming them for no damn reason).
I hate being told "Well why don't you avoid that" when advertisers are such attention whores.
Advertisers lately have been getting away with doing things that the actors, reporters, singers, and DJs can't get away with.
Bob and Tom can't play "Enormous Penis" by DaVinci's Notebook (which is now defuct, F*ck you very much, the FCC) but the advertisers can talk about how I can add length and girth to something I REALLY don't want hear about at work even during my lunch hour. A woman can not be full frontal in a movie on Cinemax at 3 a.m. but Geraldo Rivera can do a "shocking expose" (which is neither "shocking" nor qualifies as an "expose") about mainstream pornography at 3 p.m. when the kids get home from school while during the commerical breaks you see that Head On advert (which should be banned for being a form of subliminal advertising) and that commerical for the weightloss drug that shows a most of a CGI representation woman's adbomin below the abdomin near the *ahem* "downstairs area".
Make your own games and distribute them on the internet. Flash Artist do this all the time at Newgrounds sometimes.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Rockstar is really missing the boat by not developing Grand Theft CEO: White Collar.
Beating up hookers and cops? Feh. Try for the high score salary bonus of firing 50,000 drones in Q2.
The "secret collects" can be "Cooked" Books.
Fuck art. Let's kill.
What exactly is high-brow? I mean, not classical Mozart and such, but what would be an example of current high brow art? Because, I can tell you now that for every type of artist and musician there is today, there's a developer. Whether they make mods, full games, are part of a team or go solo. Video games themselves are a sub-class of game creating, like piano music is to music. So, does the definition of high-brow take sub-classes into account? Does it exclude certain subclasses? If I were to make a beautiful ballad with a Stick and Rock, could it ever be highbrow? With a Banjo? With a Synthesizer?
Most people (I'm assuming... I'm really not a high-brow kinda guy) would associate High-Brow with classical, a time period. If that's the case, any game created in that time would be gaming's High-Brow stuff. If high-brow is just whatever the "Haves" say it is, then whatever games they play, electronic or otherwise, is high-brow. But having a 'High-Brow' version of something to study or aspire to doesn't have anything to do with being an art. Many things are considered high-brow that aren't part of an art (I'm pretty sure alcohol isn't art, but Wine is considered High-Brow). This is because anything can be considered highbrow if enough snooty rich people are into it.
Being a work of art relates more to the passion put into and recieved from something than what it actually is. Thus, it's difficult to completely nail down. The only quality an art must nessisarily possess is creation: you don't find art in the wild (Though, in a sence, this is what photography does... not really though), it's a human expression. Since games are created by humans, they qualify for being art.
that is a great example but what about 'Agatha Christie's : and then there were none' from the adventure company ?, as well as "H.G Wells journey to the moon" and "Atlantis" and lets not forget "Alice" from American Mcgee as well
the adventure company has a lot of "High Brow" games with all the sophistication you could want in a game that don't have that gotta be 16 and read a 200 page stratagy to play it feel to them.
I love their games becuase they are adult games and not kids games.
just my two cents
CH
Simulators. Particularly the ultra-realistic flight sims.
Sure, not going to advance our culture in the same way as a piece of art, but there are plenty of people out there playing simulators that don't play anything else, and often comprise a completely different demographic than your standard PC gamer.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
I would go as far as to say that great implementations of great concepts are "high brow" - like Dungeon Keeper 2 or Black and White 2. DK2 can make being evil so funny... and every now and then as you crush the life out of a do-good hollering knight it makes you think.
I experienced moments in Half Life where I've never been as scared and thrilled as when in that chase, and in Half Life 2 that were so graphically beautiful and yet societally sad it was really breath-taking. There are even sections of Splinter Cell that make you think, and moral decisions abound for you - you can play each of the 3 in the series taking maybe 3 lives in the entire game if you choose to take the challenge; even more challenging is harming no more than 6.
And what about Second Life? No high-brow? I think this guy hangs around too many sports game players. There's a lot of crap out there, and with EA's help there's more than ever, but to suggest true works of digital art aren't being released is just a journalist scraping for something to write about.
Why are there so few adult games? I don't mean porn, I mean games that you have to be older than 14 to really appreciate. One of the reasons I liked Silent Hill 2 so much better than the other games in the series was that the motivations of the characters were so different from the standard "Escape! Revenge! Make things go boom!". How many kids are going to empathize with a suicidal guy who's running around a ghost town because the only thing he has to live for is a chance of seeing his dead wife again? I want more stuff like that. There are way too many perpetually cheerful adventurers and ruggedly determined squad leaders for my taste.
Visit the
TFA is a troll, but I'm going to respond anyway. The author thinks that there are no highbrow videogames simply because he isn't looking for them. A Mind Forever Voyaging, Planescape: Torment, Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey, Seven Cities of Gold, and M.U.L.E. all fit his 'highbrow' (ie: pretentious fuckwad) definition. The first four have all of the elements that he said should be present in an ideal highbrow game: literate and intelligent plots, fantastic artwork and music (well, apart from AMFV - but it does have excellent descriptions!), and fun gameplay. Seven Cities of Gold is the original edutainment title, before the label was corrupted by Carmen Sandiego and friends. It correctly portrays the way natives and colonials interacted back then. M.U.L.E. is the videogame equivalent of chess (which is a 'highbrow' boardgame): a complex economic multiplayer strategy game that requires a great deal of intelligence and creativity to win.
We already do have several "Merchant Ivory" developers (though the analogy is flawed because movie studios rarely maintain the same cast, support crew, writers, and composers for multiple films - but videogame developers tend to stay together as a team). Looking Glass Studios (RIP) created several excellent first-person games like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Thief. Those games (and hopefully BioShock, by Irrational Games) had one thing that the author forgot about: amazing interactivity. The many and varied actions allowed by the game resulted in no two people playing them the same way. That's the difference between videogames and other media: the ability for players to do things the way they want. A true "Merchant Ivory" developer is one that recognizes this and makes puzzle-solving as freeform as possible. The true mark of skill, though, is allowing such freedom without creating arbitrary barriers or letting the player 'break' the game. Other developers that follow this model include(d) Origin Systems (Ultima 7 is insanely interactive), Rockstar North (People don't seem to realize that GTA gets such high review scores because of the violence. Rather, it's because of the FREEDOM to do such actions), and Maxis (now part of EA. Will Wright's Sim games are the ultimate sandbox titles).
But that's only one half of the coin. Gameplay can take a completely different form. Arcade games with complex scoring systems and carefully planned levels are no less highbrow than the supposedly more intelligent adventure or rpg genres. Take a look at Treasure's games. Radiant Silvergun is an obvious example: the complex chaining system, insane bullet patterns, and long levels combine to create a very difficult game. Radiant Silvergun is a game that requires skill, intelligence, and memorization to even begin to play well. Weapon power (and thus survival) is directly died to scoring, so actually learning the nuances of the game is absolutely required for survival. Raizing's Battle Garegga is similar: the game throws more (and more difficult) enemies at the player based upon survival time. It also hands out extra lives constantly, as long as the player is scoring well. This means that the best way to play Battle Garegga is to deliberately commit suicide on a regular basis in order to keep the difficulty down. And these are just two examples. I haven't mentioned Dodonpachi, G-Darius, or Border Down...
And that's just a single action subgenre. So, contrary to what the author believes, 'simple' action games can be very detailed and complicated. And that's the problem with the article. Instead of viewing videogames on their own strengths, he compares them to movies and uses movie standards. And, of course, they come up short. Do arcade games contain social critiques or statements on life and death? No. But they do contain the thing that makes videogames different from novels, movies, or plays: gameplay.
... and they were called turn-based strategy games.
Lo and behold, tho', the game publishers have come to discover that there just isn't much of a market for games that actually force one to think and strategize and plan. People would much rather play social or mindless - or mindless social - games instead.
So, yes Virginia, there are highbrow video games, but you'll likely find them at abandonware sites or in the used games aisle at your local old-school gaming store... you know the kind perhaps, with actual gaming tables and a high-caffeine soda vending machine in a back room of the store? You certainly won't find them at your local Game Stop store.
Didn't Hideo Kojima say at one point that video games weren't art?
"God is nothing but a public static final variable x." - my roommate
Even though I don't think we've reached a point of defining "sophistication" (or the loaded, "high-brow", as you prefer) in gaming yet, I think you can start to see the emergence of the symtoms of sophistication in the form of some of the debates in today's gaming culture. All sophisticated art forms are surrounded by fierce debates about what qualifies as "good work". Usually ideas get devided into different camps, and I think we are beginning to see the formation of these intellectual camps today. Almost all art forms have some sort of narrative contingency, and absolutist contingency. An example would be in music in the mid 19th century between Wagner (programmatic/narrative music) vs. Brahms (absolute music). One side always exclaims that to be "truly" great work in a particular art form, it has to be separated, completely, from all other forms of art/media. The Brahms camp felt that any narrative or "program" induced by a piece of music diluted the genre, and was therefor a lesser work.
Stop by any RPG forum, and you see this very same debate. You have the narrativist camp, which uses litterary and narrative frameworks as a way of defining quality of gaming works. Then you have the "interactivist" camp, which claims that any traditionally based, linear narrative dilutes the unique properties of the truly interactive medium.
These are the debates in which the definitions of sophisication arrise. The debate will NEVER be won, just as there are still are large amounts of both program and absolute music being composed today, but is healthy to the developement of the genre. So, for anyone who believes that either the Final Fantasy paradigm or the Elder Scrolls paradigm will become the dominant form, I hate to tell you this, but every other media genre has had the same debate, and never has either side ever won or lost.
Are there sophisticated games? I think there are some hints of sophistication here and there, I don't think there are any truly sophisticated works yet, however. Myst is the first thing that comes to mind. However, absolutists will point out that all of its qualitative characteristics are based on other art forms, namely computer graphic arts, music, acting, and litterature.
For the narrativist, the ideals of sophistication are already being reached, as Myst would probably be considered sophisticated, but due to its graphic art, music, and narrative work. For the absolutist, the question of what aspects makes the video game genre unique haven't quite been answered yet, so defining sophistication becomes a lot more difficult.
It all boils down to "theory". All art gaining momentum in its sophistication developes its own type of theory. Western music has Music Theory, drama has different schools, and movies have film theory. Now, I'm not in the gaming business, so I can't easily see if there is any video game theory developing, but I suspect there probably is. Once that becomes more readilly apparent, and more universally applicable, I think we will start to see a more apparent sophistication in gaming.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Computer games are by and large targeted on the same crowd that are interested in pornography: teenagers (and adults who didn't grow up). Please note: this is not intended as a criticism of gamers (or pornography, for that matter), it's simply my opinion. And just like pornography generally has no credible storyline, because it is irrelevant and the audience would object to it, most games too can't have any real depth - after all when you buy a FPS game, what you want to see is cool weapons, scary monsters and lots of blood; having to think and figure it out would ruin the adrenalin rush, just like an intellectual drama would make a pornographical movie less wankable.
There *are* games that require a bit more in terms of mental activity - eg Crossfire - but they don't really seem to draw huge crowds. On top of that I suspect that the people who enjoy a bit mental exercise are more likely to prefer a printed book that they can read anywhere. Perhaps it is down to the way one generally uses one's brain: some people tend to be more visually oriented, while others think more in words.
I would argue that MMORPG's when played as intended, meaning in character, are highbrow. The mention of Merchant-Ivory productions as highbrow entertainment, led me to think how Victorian Society played their roles in a very strict manor. One did not openly let their true selves show due to the rules of proper society and class destinction. This is much like the structure of RPG's. To call something highbrow, one needs to take into consideration the makeup of the person making that statement. Some people think they are drinking swill if they don't pay more than $50.00 for a bottle of wine, while others can find a great wine in 2 Buck-Chuck.
-Eric
Your comments are funny but *I* understood it. Basically he's saying that he's assed-out and awared no credibility by society because he's black and may as well be dead in the context of achieving anything worthy of note in this lifetime but it's not that big a deal in the scheme of things. It's like a more raw version of Maya Angelou. I thought she was dumb when I had to read her in 6th grade too.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
Wizball will never grow old...
Just wanted to clarify that one.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I really pitty people that utter such nonsense.
In Europe (have you ever been there?) classical music is a very afordable entertainment. You can pay as little as 15 or 20 US$ for a concert with top performers. I have been to concerts by all the great orchestras and performers you care to name (Placido Domingo, Cecilia Bartolli, all the London Orchestras, Berlin Philharmonic, Viena Philharmonic, Maurizio Polini, Eugeny Kissin. You name it) and never ever had to pay more than 50$ (for the most expensive ones, the norm is around 20).
Also classical music CDs are amongst the cheapest ones, even new releases.
And lastly, if you meet people that enjoy classical music, you know that such gross mischaracterization as rich and pretentious is unfair and idiotic frankly.
Where you got the idea the Mozart, the most popular of classical composers, is revered only by rich people, is beyond me.
Nowadays rich people are sports stars, politicians and showbussiness people. If you are telling us these individuals go to a Mozart concert at all, forget the ridiculous circumstances you describe, I frankly think you should get out more, perhaps to a concert where Mozart music is performed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Mozart's operas where the popular music of his day.
Back on his time he had to pander to his rich sponsors (royalty, the church to a lesser extent) in exactly the same way as today's composers and performers look at the support of welth individuals, corporations or the state.
But that does not mean that he was appreciated only by those people. In particular the operas had a wide popular appeal.
Western classical music is seen or perceived as high brow outside Europe (including the god old US of A to my surprise and dismay) for no factual reason whatsoever.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But thoroughly enjoy Italian, German and French Opera. As do many people without much language knowledge of these tongues.
I could go on a long tirade about why this is possible, but I'll leave it there. You complete mischaracterization of opera lovers is silly and shows a great deal of ignorance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Several cities have found, to their surprise, this to be the case. Orchestras pull more listeners in a season than professional sports during the same period.
That is why any medium city nowadays has an orchestra (heck, Mexico, a relatively poor country, has at least one on each state).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Popular entertainment is trivial and disposable. But it is not culturally insignificant.
Art that is worth anything requires your involvement, it requires that you do some work from your side. It requires that you interpret it in some way.
That is the only real difference between art that maters and art that doesn't.
The use of the highbrow term is very idiotic and unfortunate, but ther is no question that if somebody wants to understand art that makes humanity thick he has to sit down and learn new things. THis has nothing to do with social class or bank accounts, but with interest and curiosity.
Unfortunately one of the things that is suppressed in people of poor backgrounds is the desire to learn and their curiosity (when you are more worried about paying the rent, considerations about art certainly are not very pressing).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Perhaps the author of the article was looking for SimHighbrow?
You could play in First Person Perspective, and go on wine tastings, read New Yorker magazine, and even watch a Polo match. Phenomenal concept.
It's an afternoon at the video arcade! The arcade is packed with kids,
some even forming long lines as they wait for a game to become free.
Martin plays one of the more intellectual games.
Video Man: Thirsting for a way to name the unnameable, to express the
inexpressible?
Martin: [entranced] Tell me more!
-- Martin plays "My Dinner with Andre",
How much do typical "high-brow" "art films" cost to make? Usually very little when compared to big Hollywood blockbusters. Smaller high brow films are much cheaper to produce, so they don't need to make as much money. A decent video game on the other hand, can't help but be a large, expensive project. Because "high-brow" games would probably appeal to a smaller audience, they would most certainly lose money as they would cost the same amount to produce but not sell as many copies. Just my thoughts...
Everyone seems to be missing a glaring technological discrepancy between, say, Bach and computer games. I can find 50 versions of the Brandenburg Concertos on CD, SACD, DVD-Audio, (and probably cassette and vinyl) and THEY WILL ALL WORK ON MY STEREO EVEN THOUGH THE MUSIC IS HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD. So the opportunity to sample, share and reccommend is ALWAYS there - we call it "viral marketing" now ;-).
On the other hand, there is (to pick just one example I know of) a VERY highbrow computer game called "Alice" - a Japanese interpretation with interactive orginal art, a card-game theme, and for some reason, a great selection of wine reccommendations (I kid you not.) But you've never heard of it, right? This game is from the Windows 3.1 era and I am not aware of any way to run it on my XP system.
So the limited life of games is not just annoying for the people who own them, as has been pointed out in previous threads - it means that the opportunity for viral sharing is nipped in the bud. "Highbrow" games are exactly the ones with potential staying power, which would benefit from long-term word-of-mouth and playing by many people over many years - which is exactly what you CAN'T get with the endless churn in gaming platforms. I too have a Commodore 64 stashed away.. but you can only keep so many boxes!
There are independant and art house games available on the PS2. You just have to look around.
He is remembered for what he wrote, not for what he did.
Had he written the same stuff without acting upon it, he would be equally remembered.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have, and let me tell you that some of them are the works of anonymous geniuses.
The photographs you have seen of some cave paintings can't properly prepare you for the reality.
I think youre example is very unfortunate. Most cave paintings are found at a time when Homo Sapiens was tens of thusends of years old as a species. Cave painting is high culture with few means.
The timeframes of painting and video games development are completely unrelated.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well, not really, go programs tend to not be able to compete with average human players. We are still much better.
But Go surely is a more highbrow game than chess. More deep, more strategic, more subtle, more fun.
I still can't beat GNUGo but that's just me.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Would the alliance politics found in EvE online be considered "high brow"? What about interdictions and industrial ventures?
It is often ironic that those that define others as lemmings are often themselves lemmings dancing to the latest fad.
There are very highbrow computer games. Things like the obfuscated programming challenge are constructs of cultural conditions (call it geek call it intellectual) and exercise the mind of the performer and observer for entertainment.