Where’s Our Goddamned Merchant Ivory?
Gamasutra holds up the mirror to the acne-pocked, wolf-whistling face of the gaming industry in Where's Our Merchant Ivory, an article that addresses the lack of intellectualism in video games and what it means for the reputation of the genre as a whole.
And it explains, quite nicely, why we need serious, artful games with valuable content.
Elite forms of a medium help to legitimize that medium. They provide status symbols that people who want to be thought of as important and respectable can support. That's why big corporations and wealthy families give money to ballet companies and symphony orchestras: Publicly sponsoring the elite forms of these arts reflects well on the givers. The lite forms also create shelter in which the less "worthy" forms of the medium can operate more safely. Once an lite form of video games exists, nobody can ever again say, "video games are just a silly waste of time." Nobody would dream of saying that about music, even if they thought it was true of bubble-gum pop.
The author, Ernest Adams, goes on to explain what this hypothetical Merchant Ivory game would entail (exquisite art and music, meaningful content, excellent writing, moving performances, and like all truly great art, it would be vastly entertaining. Captivating, in fact.
Adams also posits that the Merchat Ivory of gaming is currently Sid Meier, a position I disagree with strenuously. I venture the opinion that Halflife 2 is closer to the gaming-art ideal; a tantalizing mixture of moving content and impressive execution.
Where's Our Merchant Ivory? [Gamasutra]
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