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?"

Comments

Isn't art highbrow?

[ALeavitt]

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.

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[giorgiofr]

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

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[XenoRyet]

Those two are excelent examples, and the columnist's discription of a "highbrow game" was practicaly a review of the Myst series. I'm sure there are a score of other great examples that we're not remembering just at the moment.

I don't think the problem is so much that we don't have highbrow games, as it is that no one, not even snooty columnists, recognizes them when they see them.

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Final Fantasy VII certainly not graphically wounderful by todays standards but it has love, betrayal, your heros journey. Not to mention it actually evokes emotional responses from player other then just frustration at how hard it is to beat some boss. Top that all off with and amazing music score and you have the closes thing to highbrow I've seen in awhile, much more so then say Civ 4.

Very simple answer

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Very simple answer

[PriceIke]

Oh I disagree.

Games like M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, Mail Order Monsters, Tetris and the brilliant Infocom series of games were masterpieces of gameplay, craftsmanship and ingenuity. Games today have much better graphics, but originality and creativity? That can be argued.

My kid sister (who is 29) and I still regularly fire up the old Commodore to play M.U.L.E. Ah, the 640K floppy disk, no entering mystic serial numbers and checking with the company server to grant you "permission" to play your game .. those were the good ol' days.

Re:Very simple answer

[Golias]

I put it to you that video gaming does have a history. Just as movies draw from the theater tradition, before there was Quake (or even Pac Man or Pong) there was pinball, pachinko, magnet-driven football, air hockey, Stratego, Connect 4, and endless other distractions which one could set up in a parlour room, alone or against an opponent, to pass idle hours. There were even handheld games (cup and ball, for example).

I recall a Star Trek toy I received as a child. It had a "screen" which was really a scrolling screen made of a big hidden wheel which simulated motion. To play, you had to navigate around various obstacles like planets and Klingon ships. Similar race-car games were around in the 70s. These, along with similar childhood amusements, are the true tradition that video games grew out of, and I doubt it will ever be regarded as high art.

Art is essentially a medium of communication, from the artist to the audience. The best art conveys feelings and notions which can not be conveyed with literal descriptive language alone. The interactive nature of gaming, almost by definition, excludes it from being regarded as an art form, beyond the creative trappings of the game's "eye candy" and music soundtrack.

Re:Very simple answer

[Elemenope]

I'm sorry but this struck me as pretty silly. Mozart wasn't 'high-brow' (i.e. intellectually and asthetically sophisticated) because tickets cost a lot of money; he was, like Beethoven and especially Bach a musical genius who made sophisticated, complicated and beautiful musical constructions. That the people who were predisposed to like him were educated and therefore also predominantly wealthy (in order to get that education) is quite literally a coincidence, a correlation which you confused with causation. That any Joe can pick up a Mozart CD does not mean any Joe can understand and appreciate said CD; music of all genres and categories requires an extant cultural setting and prior aesthetic vocabulary to be appreciated. But, any Joe with exposure and time may learn, like many people with a classical education already had an opportunity to do, to appreciate his works.

Re:Very simple answer

[Haeleth]

Let's face it, though, that the computer culture is, so far, a short one. It's a very new medium, unprecedented by anything it developed from that could be viewed as the "heritage" of it. Music developed during the ages. Even movies had their roots in theatres and plays. Computer games have nothing to draw from.

True, that. How can games ever hope to be taken seriously? It's not like there are ancient traditions of gaming with deep roots in our culture or anything. No serious intellectual would dream of wasting his time on a frivolous pursuit of the working classes, like chess, or go, or bridge.

Does it matter?

[Richard Steiner]

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.

Pointless article...

[Jerf]

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.

Merchant Ivory films are melodramatic garbage

[elrous0]

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." If you get beneath the surface of most of those films, you'll find writing little better than that of a predictible soap opera. In the world of truly serious filmmaking, it takes more than a classical soundtrack and posh English actors (or Americans faking posh English accents) to cut the mustard.

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

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Planescape: Torment

[Anthony Boyd]

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

A definitive list of (commercial) highbrow games.

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

1. A Mind Forever Voyaging

Admittedly it's not a very long list, but it's accurate, complete, and most importantly of all, non-empty.

Re:Umm No..

[prakslash]

High brow doesnt mean "we are better than you".

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.

"High brow," no, culture yes...

[mrraven]

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.