Well, I remember Starcade, so…
I’d like to put the plug in for “A Mind Forever Voyaging”, which in addition to being a good game, is also one of the best Science Fiction novellas I’ve read.
Hideo,
I am not sure I buy your explanation. For one thing computer game shows are probably cheaper than a lot of other programming; all you really need is a bunch of guys to present the show and review the games. In fact existing game magazines probably could produce these shows at very little extra cost apart from studio expenses. They would also have a good brand-name headstart.Perhaps I should send an e-mail to one of them with the suggestion.
I design computer and video games for a living, and I’ve thought about this question a lot.
I think there are a number of answers:
1.) Inaccessability to the masses. Virtually anybody can sit still for an hour and a half and watch a movie. Playing games requires skill and practice. You have to work to enjoy a game. And for large numbers of people the work exceeds the enjoyment of the experience.
2.) The trap of our core demographic. Most games are bought and played by young men. So, like a self-fulfilling prophacy, most games are targeted at young men. Young men tend to enjoy … how to put this delicately … lower forms of entertainment: action movies, porn videos, comic books, football. The focus is mostly on action and sex and not very much on emotion or thought.
3.) The fundamental difference between experiencing and observing. Drama requires the audience to have some distance from the performance. Watching Hamlet destroy everything he loves is entertaining because we don’t have the power to stop him. As pure observers we can be thrilled and moved, but we have no responsibility for his actions – our hands are clean. When you play a video game your hands are never clean. This means that certain staples of “high art” (the tragic hero, for example) are difficult to achieve. The player will decide that he doesn’t care a whit about the morally messy process of avenging his father’s death – he would rather spend all his time hitting on Ophelia.
Games have been in the mainstream culture for at least two decades now. Who doesn’t know something about Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Mario, or Doom? These are all games that have been featured in mainstream news over the past 20 years. Not every game will reach mainstream popularity or even mainstream knowledge. But then not every book or movie does either. Video/computer games are already part of the mainstream.
Marc
I’ve seen this debate cross oh-so-many gaming magazines and forums, and it always gives me the image of Christians wondering why the Buddhists don’t convert. Or something like that.
The point is, Computer games aren’t advertised on TV so much because they don’t need to be. Seriously, would you pay the price of having your game advertised primetime when you knew that avid gamers would have a magazine advertising it or looked at it on the net on say, GameSpy? Game Developers get all the advertising they need through PC Magazines and the internet.
People who are interested in Computer games almost definately own a computer, and nowadays probably have the internet. Most gamers buy a magazine of their choice once every ffew months, or own a subscription. Any one of these magazines has pretty much the same thing. Same games reviewed, same hardware reviewed etc etc. There are differences, naturally, but you can flick through to find what interests you each month and decide then whether it’s worth it or not.
Aside from advertising or reviews, what’s the point of having something about computer ames on TV? There aren’t many shows around devoted to movie reviews, and all the main characters in games are fictitious, so no need for paparazzi invasions of privacy. (Lara Croft: My terrible fight against permanent spinal damage due to breast size!)
Games are about as mainstream as they’re going to get, IMO, because as much as you can argue that they aren’t mainsteram because a lot of people don’t play them, I don’t watch dodgy teenage sex comedy movies like American Pie, and I never enjoyed other mainstream TV shows and music bands, and I know a lot of others who share that habit.
I just finished Final Fantasy VII tonight, and I have to agree. I’ve never seen environmental issues tackled at that level of complexity in any other media. Not in a movie, not in a novel.
It’s all in there – jobs vs the environment, peaceful versus violent forms of environmentalism, the role of unregulated corporate power, the amorality of science when faced with consequences of technology, and even the role of religious beliefs in environmentalism.
I could easily write a paper on it for a literature class, but no professor of mine would consider it literature. 
Oddly enough the weakness in games is that they are interactive. Most people are familiar with Mario Bros, but few people have played the game enough to have finished it. Games take skill and practice and the tenacity to play until the end. If you go to a movie, everyone has the same experience and it requires no skill or practice. All you need is an ass and a pair of eyes. If you hate a movie, you have to have seen it, if you hate a video game you quit at the beginning levels.
I think the debate is closed with the point that playing a game takes skill and practice. Oddly enough, parents seem to hate video games more than tv, eventhough playing a video game actually developes something, while most tv is just mindless dribble. I think we would all have to agree that video games are about as mainstream as they can get, until they start making ones that appeal to women or gay men, which i doubt can happen. 
Hey, I’m a gay man, and video games appeal to me
I’ll mention Final Fantasy VII again – you can get your male character to dress in drag, have sex with a guy, and go out on a date with another guy.
Incidentally, having sex with a guy bring’s your character’s hit points and magic points up to maximum. That’s gotta be better than safe sex – healing sex! 
Of course, if I ever write an essay on this game, I won’t go into that…
Hey, video games appeal to me too, but im saying that they probably don’t apply to the typical gay man.
And yeah, in GTA 3 you can pick up a hooker, have her give you a bj, and you get 25 extra hp! I think that’s a cool feature in games.
I think saying games can’t get to you on an emotional level like a movie is flat out wrong. Sure, you might not get attatched to Mario and care when he dies, but you’re not really supposed to (it’s not the purpose of the game). When you play a game like Resident Evil 2, you definately get involved. You go around a corner not knowing what to expect as the eerie music dies down and you hear a quiet “slurping” noise…you slowly round the corner and hear it get closer, breathing…as you pass a window, BAM, something jumps out at you and your heart races as you try to kill it or run away. In fact, you could say the emotional impact is heightened by the fact that if you didn’t go around that corner, it wouldn’t have happened, so you feel more “involved” with the game and the experiences feel like they’re happening to you, not a character on the screen.
Many people have said they cried at parts of FFVII, and one of the reasons (like say the Aeris dying scene) things have so much impact is because you’ve been interacting with the characters, not just watching them, and when things happen to them, it’s like you’re losing someone you “knew”. Similar to how when you read about a car accident in the paper, it’s a bit disturbing but doesn’t really affect your everyday life, but when you have a friend who gets in a car accident, there’s a huge impact on you emotionally.
Graphics are important, but books have no graphics and people enjoy them. Years ago when the first Alone in the Dark was the “height” of technology with it’s 3d models and creepy environments, people went around frightened to go around corners and see what happens next, the same way they did with Resident Evil 2 recently, and Silent Hill 2 now. The graphics in AitD are terrible, looking back, but the game still screwed with your emotions. I remember playing Wolfenstein for the first time and being SCARED to play it (I was fairly young, heh), despite the graphics being fairly crappy compared to today’s games…Anyway, games are more than capable of doing what movies and books do. The fact that they don’t look photorealistic isn’t really an issue.
(paragraph stolen from another place where I’ve written about this): Games are, in my opinion, the ultimate medium. You can combine text (books), camera work (movies), music (songs), graphics (art), animation (cartoons), visuals (photography), etc. in any combination you want and then add something totally unique to videogames: interactivity. Sure, there are Choose Your Own Adventure books and that kind of thing, but videogames allow the user to interact with the world their character is in, and even to change it.
Nobuo Uematsu wrote around 160 songs for Final Fantasy 9…160 different songs, portraying different moods/emotions, events, etc. Some sad, some happy, some to get you pumped up for fighting, some to create suspsense, some for characters dying, general wandering…just in one game. But can you turn on the radio and hear his work? Nope. You can buy CDs of his songs and such, but those are for the fans who know where to find them…you won’t hear them in mainstream places. The art/animation in a game like Capcom VS SNK 2 is amazing…tons of frames of animation, character portraits hand-drawn and painted, great designs…but you’ll never see a picture of Ryu in an art gallery, heh. Metal Gear Solid 2 uses excellent camera angles and lighting, every bit as good as a movie, but a lot of people won’t even glance at it because it’s just a game…
Anyway, videogames are still generally ignored (like comic books) and considered “kid stuff”, but it’s starting to change (thankfully). Gamers who’ve grown up with the games and know they’re more than just kid stuff are getting older and taking up jobs in the media, and games are getting to the point where they’re looking great (Quake looks good to a gamer, but to Joe Average, blocky polygon models aren’t exactly amazing) and random people on the street are beginning to be impressed. I’ve run into a few people who, after seeing the commercial for that X-Box racing game (Project Gotham? Can’t quite remember), comment “That’s a game??”. 
heh…sorry, I like to ramble a lot and I’m on the verge of getting into the gaming industry myself right now, so topics like this are fairly relevant to me and I think about them a lot.
- Tsugumo
I have to add my two cents here.
First of all, I have to admit (somewhat reluctantly), that I’m an adult, and have been one for a number of years. I’m married (no kids), and have worked over the past twenty years.
And I have enjoyed interactive adventure games in the past: the original text-adventure Zork, for example; or the text Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. They were fun, but I was younger, and had the time to play them.
Nowadays, I have to say that I’m usually too busy with the responsibilities of life to spend much time developing the skill necessary to do well at a game such as has been described. For one thing, there are other tasks that need doing more (giving the car an oil change, household chores, etc.). There are other things that my wife and I can both do together that interest us, instead of a computer game just interesting me. (And yes, one of them is…well, you know.)
Do I still play any computer games? Yes, a few, but they are generally ones that I can spend a few minutes playing, then forget about: card games, casino games, pinball games. I can end these at any time, and forget about them–I don’t have to save the game and remember where I was when I come back to it. Perfect for when I have to run because the cat is barfing up yet another hairball, or when my wife’s car won’t start.
The OP has referred to “those who played games in the 80s not being old enough to make editorial decisions yet” and similar phrases alluding to young people not being in control of the industry and culture. But I’ll venture that while I was one of those who played in the 1980s (although I was a older than a teenager), my experience is that one’s priorities change.
It’s easy to spend the time playing a game for hours or days when one doesn’t have to attend to other people or responsibilities. (Although I’m sure some of the posters here have responsibilities that are just as numerous and/or pressing as mine.) And believe me–after sitting at a work computer for seven or eight hours a day, I don’t necessarily feel like doing the same thing with a game when I get home from work.
You may feel differently, or you may know some very avid gamers who are my age. That’s fine; as always, your mileage may vary. But my feeling as to why computer and video games are not part of mainstream culture is that as one gets older, gets a job, gets married, has adult responsibilities and perhaps children, and so on, one’s interest in lengthy and involved games wanes. It is far easier to spend the comparatively shorter amounts of free time with brief games, TV, movies, books, and magazines; as well as with other activities.
Just my two cents. Of course, YMMV.
And I’m a woman and they appeal to me. In fact, I review them and actually get paid for it. One way to tell that games have actually entered mainstream is to look at the top 10 selling games each week. Games like Stronghold, Dark Age of Camelot and Max Payne actually sell beyond the hardcore group. That’s a very good sign that more and more people are getting into games. And the fact that The Sims and RollerCoaster Tycoon have sold so well indicates that people are taking chances with games that are more complicated than Tetris.
I had a female friend who tried out and enjoyed Star Trek: Elite Force as her first FPS and truly loved it once she got used to the controls. For some reason, though, most women are actually somewhat afraid of that type of game. I think that a lot of women don’t want to be seen doing something that they perceive as childish. It’s okay if their men do it. After all, “boys and their toys.” I think most women are boring to be around.
Spoons,
Good points. Though if and when you have a kid you might find that playing the games he (or perhaps she) likes with him might be a great way to spend time together.
I know quite a few married guys who play games but quite often there is a humorous theme with them about how they have to steal game-time “when the wife is not looking”. I guess if women enjoyed games themselves it might be easier for married men to keep playing them. Again quite an interesting activity to do together.
throatshot,
Wow. Where did that come from?
Your main point is valid though. There is a general image about games as being childish which puts off women and older people. Trying to understand why that image persists when it’s definitely untrue for many games out there is one thing I wanted this thread to explore.
Although I have heard that women are particularly into RPG’s and also games like the Sims.
Yes, you’ll find a much higher percentage of women playing those types of games than you will playing shooters and real-time strategy games and such. And women are the majority on sites like pogo.com. I don’t really know why that is, except that a lot of women like stories, which RPGs are heavy on, and The Sims is like a soap opera. Pogo has the kinds of games you can pick up and put down easily. I very much enjoy RPGs and The Sims (I’m so itching for Hot Date), but unlike most women, I love a good shooter, whether Unreal Tournament or my current favs, Aliens vs. Predator 2 and Red Faction.
**
Years of trying to get any other female interested in doing something that doesn’t involve talking about clothes or shopping.
<slight hijack>
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one vaunting the merits of FFVII.
If we were going to make the argument that video games could be “art” – (IMHO, intelligent ideas expressed beautifully) – what would be some other candidates for the category?
</slight hijack>
Hamish,
I think that some of the adventure games like Grim Fandango definitely are up there as “art”.