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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?"
Classical music, perhaps the definitive example of "highbrow", was actually the pop music of the time; it enjoyed widespread popularity amoung all classes.
Not to dispute your original point, but this statement isn't true. Classical music (specifically, symphonic music and opera--the Classical era runs from 1812 to 1900-ish (IIRC, and I may not)) was generally funded by wealthy patrons (i.e. nobility) and performed for them and their guests. Common people's music was ditties that could be played by one or two musicians and sung along to. This is what we now call "folk music". The concept of "pop music" didn't really come about until the early twentieth century when it became possible to distribute recordings.
A better example would probably be literature. Shakespeare, for example, wrote plays that everyone could enjoy. He had dirty jokes for the aristocrats and flowerly language for the peasants.