A cover for the comic book "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill

In Part I of our critique of level designer and blogger Steve Gaynor's assertion that "video games will never become a significant form of cultural discourse the way that novels and film have," we talked about how any medium requires a certain amount of learning in order for it to be approached and engaged. We also suggested that as more people grow up playing videogames, even conventional controllers like those of the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 become far less of a barrier to entry, to say nothing of newer interfaces such as the Wii. But Gaynor believes that there's something even more essential, even more fundamental about videogames that will forever wall the medium off from truly widespread participation:

[T]he very nature of interactive games bars them from ever truly gaining mass acceptance, and therefore mass cultural relevance. The strength of video games, what makes them unique, interesting, and affecting, is that they engage in a dialogue with each individual player. They ask you to invest yourself in the experience, to explore and understand the logic of their gameworld, and to activate the experience by doing. Video games require you to be involved, to take responsibility for your actions onscreen. They expect more out of you than film, television, the internet or a book does. You get from video games what you're willing to put in. The audience at large only wants to take.

The very thing Gaynor decries--a lack of willingness among the audience to work for their entertainment--isn't inherent in to this medium. It's almost intractable among mass audiences no matter what the medium. Popular fiction generally outsells literary fiction. Summer blockbusters generally out-gross arthouse films. Is this any different from, say, Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat out-NPD-ing BioShock last year, or Madden doing the same to Shadow of the Colossus in 2005? Does it truly matter that in aggregate television is more mass a mass medium than videogames, when on an individual level, its practitioners are faced with the same challenges that plague those who work in other media? The creator of "The Wire," David Simon, in explaining the advantages of working on TV shows for premium cable described the problem as follows:

 A cover of the acclaimed comic book "Planetary." Written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by John Cassaday

The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes
The blossom embraces the bee
But soon says a whisper, arise, arise
Tomorrow belongs to me
--"Tomorrow Belongs to Me" from the musical "Cabaret," music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb

A bet is a type of game, one with which we here at Level Up have become intimately familiar. So when we got wind of a brand new wager of sorts, between bloggers Borut Pfeifer (at The Plush Apocalypse) and Steve Gaynor (over at Fullbright), our antennae perked up immediately. And what was it that prompted this bout of gambling? It was level designer Gaynor's admittedly pessimistic assertion that "...I'll bet you that video games will never become a significant form of cultural discourse the way that novels and film have. I'll bet you that fifty years from now they'll be just as mature and well-respected as comic books are today." To which the more optimistic Pfeifer, who's working on one of Electronic Arts' Steven Spielberg games, replied, "I’ve certainly had days where I’d agree with most everything he says. I get where it’s coming from. Whether it was a frustrating day at work, or sometimes just going to a particularly rough GDC, I am not immune to that brand of despair. But, overall, I gotta say, games still have much more to achieve as a medium--if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be working on them."

One sees the glass as half-empty, the other sees the glass as half-full. But both are largely proceeding from the same set of assumptions when they subject videogames to a close examination--in terms of their accessibility; required level of engagement; maturity of subject matter; visual realism--and find them wanting. Take the issue of accessibility, of which Gaynor says:

Video games are hard for people to get into. The barrier for entry is higher than perhaps any other popular entertainment medium. To read a book, all you need to do is go to a library, pick one up, and start reading (which isn't usually an obstacle considering the high literacy rate in the modern world.) At the advent of popular film, you only needed to walk to a movie theatre and pay your nickel (or nowadays, ten bucks) to see the latest release. Processing the experience isn't an issue: sit, watch, and you've received an experience equal to anyone else in the audience....

Over time, the technical and systemic complexity of video games have increased, while the barriers to entry have largely remained undamaged. Taking inflation into account, the cost of a home console unit has stayed largely constant since the mid-80's (and the price of a competent gaming PC has similarly kept pace;) controllers have sprouted more buttons, gyroscopes, and analogue sticks than ever; and it's still extremely common for games of high quality to be too difficult for a non-gamer to play effectively.

1. $$$...Does Obama need to spend more time wooing the game industry?
2. WoW...Blizzard finds even more ways to make it rain on them gamers
3. GH3...Musician and open mic lover protests the ersatz replacing the real
4. RND...From local to hyper-local, courtesy of the startup EveryBlock