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?

[sottitron]

These are EXACTLY the two games that came to mind for me, too. The problem with saying there are no highbrow games is that makes it seem like the author has seen them all... So maybe this is a stretch, but, who is to say a game like Rallisport Challenge 2 isn't highbrow?? First of all, its gorgeous and doesn't have anyone killing anyone else with a machette. And do you know what the bankroll of someone who is really into Rally racing is like? I mean if you can travel to another country or even another continent to see a race, you are not exactly sweating it.

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?

[aichpvee]

I'm not going to read the article (it isn't "highbrow" enough for me), but maybe the point he should have made is that there aren't ENOUGH "highbrow" games. This is probably because of the high cost and low sales (considering the price) of video games and the relatively "lowbrow" demographic that they continually fall back on because it is cheaper and safer than chasing other groups of end users. So of course there isn't that much content there, because it's all being aimed at the lowest common denominator, which is often too low to even be common.

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[utopianfiat]

Monacle-bearing man: "Pip pip, time for a spot of Myst, eh good chap?"
Stiff-upper-lip man: *pushes shuffleboard puck* "Right-oh."

Re:Isn't art highbrow?

[Mindspider]

I don't think the author was saying that we need a romance game; what the author meant was that we need more games with intellectual subtlety. Comics are an excellent example here: comics aren't lacking in technical skill. I'm currently studying art in college, and even though I may understand the intricacies of a Caravaggio or a Michelangelo painting, sometimes I'd rather just read Spawn. Comics aren't lacking in complex plotlines, either... there are many examples of fantastic writing in the comic-world.

The bottom line, though, is that true classics of any artform have layers upon layers of subtleties. There just aren't many examples of comics that are truly rich in intellectual value. From my own experience, I've found that most classical painting was done using very conventional, often uninspiring, subject matter. Look at the Mona Lisa- a standard portrait of a woman. Nothing exciting. What makes the Mona Lisa so amazing is the incredible subtlety and thought that went into the painting, and that isn't something you can pick up at a glance. A Spawn cover may look more interesting, but it pales in serious comparison.

So back to video games- there are many examples of intelligent, extremely well-executed video games out there. However, I don't see any games that are comparable to Bach or Rembrandt or Dickens. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are beautiful pieces of art, but beautiful doesn't necessarily mean "high brow".

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

[Opportunist]

Whatever it may mean...

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.

Thus they are not taken serious as a cultural element. One could argue that the junk that's currently sold as music is at best what fast food is to cooking, but there is "good" music, maybe it's a bit dated, but there are pieces of music that can be considered true art. And it needn't be something along the lines of Mozart or Beethoven. A lot of "pop music" is very capable of moving people, inspiring them, it had some serious impact on our life and it even had influence on politics and the way people see the world. I'm especially thinking about music from the peace movement in the 60s, for example. Most of it can be considered pop music, but it had a "message", it contained elements that are thought provoking, it's not just easy listening and entertaining.

Such precedents are missing in the computer games history. And now is maybe one of the worst moments to try something like that. Making games is costy. It's not like you can sit down in the basement with your friends and you strum your guitars 'til something with a message comes out. You need good people, with a lot of math and physics in their brains, and I do take a serious background in computer languages as granted, who spend a lot of time working out the game.

And then, nobody will buy it. It doesn't carter the fast food generation gamers, who want a quick, fun game to rush through and then go on to the next. And, as stated before, people who are looking for entertainment with depth, meaning and message are not looking for it in computer games.

Re:Very simple answer

[Opportunist]

I dare to repeat myself (not your fault, was the answer to a different statement and done after yours), there is no "prior art". Nothing so "old" that it's revered as the "good ol' days" when games were truely art. No Mozart, no Shakespeare, no Van Gogh, no Fritz Lang. There's nothing where snobs can look at and nod their head, saying "yeah, that was true art".

Even if you create a true masterpiece now, it would not be taken serious until the gaming culture had its three generations. It would simply not be recognized, and in about 50 years, you'd be celebrated as the grandfather of true computer games art.

Your games may even be sought after (and people would maybe pay millions to just get a copy), the few remaining originals would probably travel under tightest security from one museum to the next, but you'll die in poverty.

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

[timster]

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.

This is a very sophisticated notion, and the greatest challenge for gaming designers and critics today. I do not agree with it, but it's not trivial to refute.

Part of the problem is that video games are not homogenous in an artistic sense. Most art forms are, and thus they can be placed in a fairly straightforward conceptual box: film consists of moving pictures and sound; music in essence consists of sound only; sculpture consists of arranged and constructed objects; literature consists of language only; etc.

A video game always contains music, and it may contain cinematic sequences, and it will certainly contain still images of some sort. Many games include some amount of text material and a story. Certainly all of these can be art in and of themselves, but they all have their own history, so it's tempting to strip them away and examine the game without these "tacked-on" elements.

There are only a few games which betray this notion with clarity, and many of these are not well known. Rez is the best example I know; while it is indeed futile to consider Rez without its music, the game also adds something that the music doesn't have on its own. (Go play Rez now, if you care about art. I'll wait.)

Games like Rez can be regarded as unique, though, if you consider the game side of the experience a mere hypnotic device designed to increase mental immersion and thus increase the effect of the music. Also, this example doesn't apply so easily to a game like Super Mario Bros. However, I feel it is a good starting point to show the fallacy of the notion that interactivity excludes artistry by definition.

To go from there, I argue that the nature of art in a video game in general is what I call the "constructed experience". Traditional art can discuss and portray what it's like to be a pirate, or a race-car driver, or a spider; video games aspire to replicate the experience itself, within various limitations.

Of course, the real-world experiences are more or less dull, so we throw in a princess or two to spice things up (just like painters rarely paint the many dull scenes that they would see). Actually, this has led to the more imaginative practice of inventing the experience out of whole cloth, so that you too can spend a day in the life of the Prince of All Cosmos as he rolls up anything and everything to make new stars. When we hear talk of "gameplay", this is what it means -- the creativity and hard work that goes into creating a meaningful and textured new experience for the player. In a great game, this communicates something more than mere "fun", and that is where the art is.

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

There are some "High-Brow" games

[XxtraLarGe]

Chess and Bridge come to mind. Those are two games that are often played by the literatti...

No interest in high art that doesn't elevate.

[dominion]

Anybody remember Grim Fandango? Brilliant stuff.

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?

I am that timeless NGH that swings on pendulums like vines through mines of booby trapped minds that are enslaved by time. I am the life that supersedes lifetimes, I am. It was me with serpentine hair and a timeless stare that with a mortal glare turned mortal fear into stone time capsules. They still exist as the walking dead. As I do, the original suffer-head, symbol of life and matriarchy's severed head: Medusa, I am. It was me, the ecclesiastical one, that pointed out that there was nothing new under the sun. and in times of laughter and times of tears, saw that no times were real times, 'cause all times were fear. The wise seer, Solomon, I am. It was me with tattered clothes that made you scatter as you shuffled past me on the street. Yes, you shuffled past me on the street as I stood there conversing with wind blown spirits. And I fear it's your loss that you didn't stop and talk to me. I could have told you your future as I explained your present, but 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.

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.

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

"High Brow" means inaccessible

[Kunta Kinte]

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.

Re:Does it matter?

[Thyamine]

"High Brow" activities aren't mutually exclusive with other activities. I enjoy going to the art museum, I enjoying reading, I enjoy theatre, and I enjoy video games. I'm sure there are plenty of others here who enjoy those activities as well. Enjoying something high brow doesn't require you to have a butler and live in an estate where you don't have to interact with the common man. In fact I used to play the violin, currently practice martial arts, and this weekend I put up drywall. Go figure, I'm not just a computer geek ready to be pigeonholed for my entire life. Sorry if this sounds a bit aggressive, but I dislike how people have the notion that someone can't cross boundaries. If you use computers you don't know how to use a hammer, you work on cars so you can't be intelligent, or you like video games so you can't be mature.

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.

Obviously, the author of this article...

[monoqlith]

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

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. /takes a puff from his pipe

"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.