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"Great Works" in video games will come about as a result of natural evolution in game design. Right now, we're strongly focused on visual aesthetics -- we haven't yet achieved photorealism, so every step towards that is exciting. (That's not to diminish the importance of gameplay -- but I liked UT2004 over UT because it was prettier, for one.) But once we achieve that goal, gamers will say, "hey, it's time for something new." Designers will likely branch out and try to create interesting games in other ways -- compelling unrealistic/surrealistic aesthetics; new and interesting modes of gameplay; and (why not?) attention to "serious subject matter with cultural implications."

But I don't think we're through with the "flash" phase yet. Photorealism is still new and interesting to most of us -- and players still buy games for their graphical splendor. Once that stops happening, developers will really start experimenting -- after all, how else are we going to get your money?

(BTW, did anyone see Ernest Adams talk in Worcester yesterday? I missed it, but it must have been great.) _______________________________
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I'd consider all the hardcore flight sims & turn-by-turn strategy games to be the equivalent of 'highbrow' gaming.

It isn't for everyone.
It isn't light weight.
You have to invest a lot of time/money/mental energy
etc

OTOH, you can claim that they're very narrow niches... but that is what 'highbrow' stuff is nowadays. Though normally something has to be expensive to create exclusivity.

Isn't this an oxymoron? 'Highbrow' all but screams "serious" to me, but a game taken seriously is no longer a game.

A "highbrow" game may not have the lasting power of a piece of classical music. Furthermore, can a game not be highbrow but still have longevity? I'd argue that Ms. Pacman will have longevity. I'd wager that 200 years from now, there will be as many Ms Pacman fans as there are currently fans of any popular piece of classical music. Is Ms. Pacman highbrow? Hardly.

I think defining a highbrow game would be easy if you compare it to highbrow books:
1) Does it mostly appeal to people with graduate degrees (especially to the point where the feel compelled to write papers about it)?
2) Do players of the game look down on all other gamers? Do other gamers feel like players of the game are priggish nutjobs?
3) Does it sell at WalMart, Target, Toys R Us? (If so, it's automatically disqualified.)

I can think of examples of games that meet one of the three qualifiers (#1: text-based Adventure, #2 Eve Online, #3 lots), but I can't seem to think of a single game that meets all three.

Previously, I complained that he left the definition of "highbrow" totally underspecified. I am amused to see this quote:

Apart from the Merchant Ivory analogy, I deliberately left the definition of "highbrow" rather vague, partly because I wanted to see what interpretation my readers would put on it.

A valid idea, but he should have said he was using a vague definition up-front. (I do it often myself, so I know it can be done without also destroying the ability to make a point.)

Here, I'm going to grump a little about another underlying assumption this guy seems to be taking axiomatically, which is that there are no games that have been high-brow yet. Be sure you understand what an "axiom" is: It is something you take as given to be true and bend the rest of your argument around. Axioms can not really be "wrong". The question is, does the implications of the axiom correspond to the real world in a useful or enlightening way?

My problem with taking this axiomatically is I think it sort of ends up begging the question he's trying to pose. If he actually took the time to formulate a definition of "high-brow", he could almost certainly find a game that matched the definition, which would wreck his point. Odds are, it would be one of the games he mentioned. Instead, he seems to simply take it as given that there have been no truly high-brow games.

I'm not certain that this "highbrow" adjective he's trying to develop is a useful distinction. (Note: The entire purpose of an adjective is to provide a useful distinction, between the nouns that possess the distinction and those that don't, with the obvious extension into fuzzy logic.) It splits the set of all of the thousands of existing games into two sets: "Lowbrow", containing all of them, and "highbrow", containing none of them. At the moment, this is the very definition of a useless adjective, and if nothing has met his bar yet (with the possible exception of a currently-unattainable technology component), nothing is going to.

(Note: While he doesn't state that he is using this axiom, I infer it from the previous paragraph; the best way to explain his tossing out every game in existence is that he axiomatically assumed none of them meet the bar. He claims it's because we're not there yet; I'm disputing this claim and claiming he stacked the deck from the get-go.)

Chris Crawford tried for a "highbrow" commercial game with "Balance of Power" [peachpit.com] in 1984-1986, an "Un-war" game about thermonuclear cold (and hot) war. He wrote a book about it later, and this experience lead to the founding of the first (that I know of) newsletter for computer game designers, and then to the founding of the Computer Game Developer's Conference, still running today.

I guess im just a low rent gamer, if I had to define HighBrow gaming I would describe it as gaming were fun takes a backseat to realisim. I can remember back in the early days of gaming I had a friend who was the "Highbrow" sort, he would spend hours and hours playing "Reach For the Stars" getting angry at his computer and spouting on and on about how such and such political this and money that. I on the other hand became totally obsessed with a game called "Star Control" his was all about managing resources and mine was about pretending your Han Solo smuggling, making contact and usually battling it out Omega Race style (ships movement was based on inertia, a bit confusing for newbies but great fun once you learned how to bank and drift). He nearly had ulcers over his game which he declared as vastly superior, mine just brings back warm smiles. In his later divorce, part of the Irreconcilable differences defined in the proceeding was his unhealthy obsession with his games. I think in way turn based strategy for him was a way to feel that he was in control of something, in real life he was low rank grunt who was usually in trouble more than not.

I have a friend now that is obsessed with Flight Sims, he has a special chair, dual thrustmaster controllers and pedals, a triple monitor display and half the time he is nutty enough to wear a flight jacket while playing. I think he is half insane but he enjoys it. I think the bottom line is how you approach gaming it you obsess to the point were its a tedious job then you need to get out and get a life. If you look at it as a hobby and remember its supposed to be fun I dont see any problems.

I'd have to say that I agree with much of his article. Most of the titles and genres that people suggested are games I would agree aren't highbrow. But I think some games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus sure come close. Yet, the author disagrees because it includes gameplay ...

From the article:

Games that were visually or thematically innovative. By far the most frequently mentioned games were Myst, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Other examples included Rez, American McGee's Alice, the Oddworld series, Grim Fandango and Bad Mojo (a third-person crawler; you play the role of a cockroach). I'm all for more of this, no question. Whether or not an innovative game is highbrow depends partially on the extent to which it avoids clichés of the medium. ICO was beautiful, unusual, and moving, but it still involved an awful lot of running, climbing, and whacking things with a stick.

That last sentence bothers me. Running, climbing, and "whacking things" is general requirement for many games. That's what makes it interactive entertainment. Is it a cliché of the medium? Sure, but frankly, there's a lot of clichés that even highbrow movies and literature have as well. You could argue there are always "wasted" and "throwaway" scenes and passages, although some may argue that those are just elements of the medium.