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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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!
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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.
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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.
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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.'
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Darwinia is an example of a highbrow game. So are r@guelikes.
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.
Yet another case of people mixing what they like with they think is great. We all have our guilty pleasures, be careful not to confuse the two. I for one found the lyrics you posted absolutely vapid, reminiscent of any laptop-rocker's lyrics I find online. Furthermore, justifying someone's art with the fact that they are published or took some poetry classes at a university means little. There is one thing to keep in mind, however: de gustibus non disputandum est. The Internet is full of people trying to justify their taste constantly, whether it be an OS or "graphic novels" or even anime. Do other people really need to honor what you like as much as you do?
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.
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"A classic is something everyone wants to have played, but no one actually wants to play."
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Whether a piece of art is about dicks or courtly love, whether it was produced by starving students or for commercial gain, these things are completely orthogonal to the quality of a work of art. And games aren't crap art because they're made by companies out for profit or because they're about aliens and big cars. They're crap art because...well...they're crap art.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.