Okay, I'm willingto listen here. How would you capture their attention? Because clearly, the Playstation approach was failing miserably. 

 Then we definitely disagree because I see art for its emotional content not its intellectual (in the sense of simply making you think). A book about the genocide in Darfur can make me think so can a crossword puzzle but they are both not art. 

I don't think there is really a necessary need to capture their attention. I don't get why you are aiming for that. Aiming for more artistic games is a good aim, but aiming for more older people to play them, how is that going to improve games? I guess more games will sell (see Wii,DS).

Also it is really hard to convince people who are not accustomed to thinking of something in a certain way to accept it other than the way they have seen it their whole life.

As in many of the older people who were either before the time of video game prominence or have stayed away from them see them as just games. While there is an argument as to violent games making these people think tgames are mindless bloodfests, there is certainly an argument to make that Brain Age style games are further enhancing the idea of games just being these insignificant toy-like products because they are not trying to push story or depth or purpose either.

I bet you the people who saw the first movies also would have never ever considered them art, merely a passtime (Entertainment) and they wouldn't accept that there could be as much depth in a movie as a painting (I'm sure there are people who still think that way). In time, with the generations of old passing away and the newer generations emergin, the definition of art will grow spread once more and people will start looking at games as a possbile medium for art. Just as it happened to movies decades after they came into being so it will happen with games.

The important thing is that until then and by that time games are trying to push further than just being a passtime and Brain Age and Wii Sports are definitely not going in that direction.

Edit: I also think animated films were always previously considered kid's material or simple entertainment, until enough time passed that people can relate to animated characters and people started making artistic animated films. 

Ckmlb said: I don't think there is really a necessary need to capture their attention. I don't get why you are aiming for that. Aiming for more artistic games is a good aim, but aiming for more older people to play them, how is that going to improve games? I guess more games will sell (see Wii,DS).

Okay, totally disagree with this. The big problem with this is that young males don't care about high art. This has been shown in pretty much every way possible: they (generally -- always generally) don't care about modern literature, they don't care about canonized literature. They don't care about art house flicks, or sculpture, or modern painting, or classical painting. They don't care about operah or symphonics or even (again, generally speaking) Jazz. Not only that, it's been shown in games too -- the specific games you mention as bordering on art have had mediocre sales, terrible sales, or downright awful ones.

So unless adults are playing, there's really very little chance art will flourish in the video game industry.

cklmb: Would you go to a 45 year old lady and tell her she´s not a real reader because she reads shakespeare while you like to read Lord of the Rings?

Describing videogames as art is still far away. We are not nearly at a point where we can consider them art. Art means not visuals, art means opening peoples eyes. It means philosophy, (dis-)harmony and thoughts.

Ico might be a pretty game but it´s clearly no art. There are no really deepfull thoughts in it.

The problem we gamers have, is we often don´t even know what art is. We think if there is a game with pretty visuals it is art. That´s plainfull wrong. Art is more than just what you see, because what you see is not always what you get.

Listen: there is a game with awesome visuals and great gameplay, and you say this is a real game.

Then there is a game which helps to cure Alzheimer´s disease. There is this picture of a little boy nearly unable to move, but he is playing Wii Sports and he´s having fun.

And I ask you: Which is the real game?




Edit: Have to make a thread about this... videogames could be so much more than they currently are. And some of us want to stop it. And WE call the others conservative...

Games-as-art would be a different thread really. I'm not sure it really is what's behind the whole 'hatred for the casual consumer' battle. It could be part of it, but I doubt core gamers are feeling threatened because games might become more like art...

 You are overgeneralizing, all my friends were interested in literature in art since high school. Also I think both adults and young people in general are anti-art.

I would say I want more adults to play games to improve the quality but not if adults want more non-artistic passtime games which they seem to do. Most adults are looking in movies, books and all other media instead of gaming for art. 

 Have you played Ico? It's not for the pretty looks that I think it's art. 

Also: did I say Wii Sports is not a game? and what does it have to do with the little boy enjoying it or not. It's a matter of definitions.

Anyway Nice debate and I'm off. Stop considering Brain Age art and stop telling me Nintendo is actually taking us closer to art in games. 

Okay. If we can't agree that Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Fitzgerald and all their friends tend to be the domain of 

1) The well educated

2) The adult

or if you want to argue that teenagers absolutely love "Don Quixote" in the same way they watch reality shows by the millions every week, then I don't think we can continue. 

I'll just leave it at this: you claim adults only want insipid games. I say we don't know what adults want yet; they're just entering the market. Thanks to Nintendo. If we are ever going to see games as high art, we need to get the demographics that generally enjoy high art to start paying attention to our medium in the first place. 

How about you stop telling me otherwise? Because the Playstation audience did a god awful job of supporting the games you apparently think are "art." There's no better evidence than that.