"Setting aside the fact that Opera actually predated Bach by over a century, this response really lays bare the elitism that fuels so much anti-gaming sentiment. And, as if to further drive home the point, it also mirrors and invokes the classical music example that Kim cited (the divide between novels and comic books is another great example, but alas, one that will have to wait for another post)"
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the music and sound design part of video games and how video game music scores compare to film scores compare to modern symphonic or orchestral music compare to classical music (etc.), I'm curious what someone like Baruth would have to say about the composition work of Austin Wintory, Gareth Coker, Christopher Larkin, or Laurence Chapman (some of my very long list of favorite game composers).
Would they be considered inherently lesser than the famous film scores composers? Who are inherently lesser than modern symphonic composers or classical composers?
It's mind-boggling to me that people can look at video games without seeing their value from an artistic standpoint (visual, musical or story), just because it's "for fun." I'm not trying to imply that a game needs to "prove itself" artistically to be worthwhile by any means, but I can see where someone *might* try to draw weird lines between different forms of entertainment for their (now make sure to stick your nose in the air to get this right:) "artistic merits."
Are we supposed to be intentionally miserable at an opera or live orchestral performance? Should my wind ensemble not be playing John Williams medleys next to Ralph Vaughan Williams pieces?
It's so funny to me how people draw lines on these sorts of things (sometimes seemingly at random) when even basic poking at them shows they don't hold much weight.
This is a great angle, Christena. Thanks for pointing it out! And you want to know a really funny wrinkle in all of this? It was actually video games that got *me* listening to classical music!
It was the most unlikely game, too: Earthworm Jim 2–you know, the wacky gross-out game straight out of the cringiest fever dream from the 90s. Two of the levels used Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, movements 1 and 3. Rendered in that tinny SNES sound, but they captivated me so much, and they’re still my favorite classical compositions to this day.
From there, I got into more Beethoven, then Bach, then Handel, then Vivaldi (who I share a birthday with!)… then MOTHER 3 cast another spell on me with Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 3, which then led me to Chopin, Liszt, Gershwin… a rabbit hole I’m still tumbling down today lol.
And it was all because of video games! So using the haters’ logic, does it still hold that playing games is “valueless” if playing a game also leads one to enjoy a classical (ie, one that “has value”) work or piece? Consuming “the classics” is not mutually exclusive of consuming more popular fare—and, as you mentioned, one is not more intrinsically worthy than the other.
And that’s not even taking into consideration the many original compositions and scores that grace video games. Mitsuda’s score of Chrono Trigger is right up there with John Williams, and Nobuo Uematsu basically provided the soundtrack to my teenage years. And of course there’s the inimitable Koji Kondo, especially with the Legend of Zelda—some of the most beautiful, moving, and rousing video game music ever made.
I’d certainly argue that Koji Kondo and Hans Zimmer are in the same league as Mozart. At this point, game scores are indistinguishable from movie scores, which are “classical” music as it’s popularly understood (basically, music played by an orchestra). Why, then, does the snobbery persist?
Oh man. Earthworm Jim! That's one of those that I go years without thinking about, then one day a random memory of it will hit me and I'll have to stop and process that that was a thing for 30 seconds before going about my day. We had the first one on Sega Genesis, but I don't remember what the music might have been like on it (looks like I have a new task for my afternoon).
What an interesting tonal/aesthetic clash. And what an amazing origin story for classical music interest!
I'm not as familiar with the Chrono Trigger soundtrack (though you're not the first person I've heard mention it, so clearly I need to fix the gap in my knowledge), but Koji Kondo's music has so much nostalgia for me. Oddly, I think that's what has kept me from sticking him in the same category in my head as other video game composers (more a sign that my head makes weird choices about how it categorizes things than anything else). Most of the game music scores I listen to regularly, I also use as writing soundtracks. But the Zelda music, especially, has so much other emotional attachment to it that I almost can't write with it. It's too hard for me to separate it from the original playing experience enough to be in my own fictional world rather than in Hyrule. And I think if it was a soundtrack to a less powerful game, it would almost distract from the gameplay.
Some Hans Zimmer and John Williams works sit in a similar space in my head because the music grabs enough of my attention that I have no chance of productively writing with it, the same way I can't write with a lot of classical music (but also, some is fine? Again, brain-sorting is weird). I probably draw a very slight distinction between "soundtrack" and "classical" in that way, but would avoid calling them by those names because 95% of the time because I think it has as much (or more) to do with how my brain processes them as it does with what they were intended for.
At some point I'd love to take the extensive amount of time it would require for me to sit down and figure out which traditionally classical pieces my brain interprets as "soundtracks" and what actual soundtracks my brain interprets as "classical", but I'm not sure it would result in any conclusions that have meaning to anyone outside my head 😅
Yeah, I know what you mean about not being able to work to Zelda music. Makes me want to just bask in it!
And you absolutely *have* to check out the Chrono Trigger soundtrack (or even better, play the game if you haven't already, it's the closest thing to a perfect game I've ever played). It's catchy, evocative, masterful. There are tons of great orchestral arrangements on YouTube and Spotify (start with Blake and/or Malcolm Robinson), and then there's the Chrono Trigger Musical, which also basically doubles as a plot summary through the lyrics and visuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvZ2dA5vgg8&list=PLU-TFjG0qugDt0qSNyhaKHnfbo8oi-5gJ
I agree with everything you said Jay. I've played video games for over a decade, and still find joy in doing so.
I'm currently learning Japanese, and so occasionally I will change the language in various games and study the grammar etc. Unfortunately, there will always be people standing against gaming, even if it means believing fake information.
However, similarly to that, everything seems to be increasingly more homogenised. From clothing and cars being the same colour palette, to food being sold in the same flavours, most fall into this trap. Then if someone doesn't fit into those boxes, they're commonly considered 'weird' or something.
Sorry for the long reply lol. Reading your post made me think! 😅😆
Great idea to practice Japanese through playing games. It makes total sense, right? I suppose people will just believe what they want to believe, and unfortunately some folks want to believe that gaming is meaningless and/or harmful. But the silver lining is that eventually, people will pick another medium or hobby to scapegoat or demonize (you never see anyone trying to incite moral panics about movies these days, right?).
Oh, and don't worry about length. As you'll see if you stick around, long posts and replies are this newsletter's bread and butter! 🍞🧈
Good article, if still coming off a little defensive. I think the idea that ‘fun’ is disparaged in general is true, but I wouldn’t lay the blame on the distant echoes of crusty old ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ anymore. The current drive to homogenize culture is, I believe, a different beast. Fun or the consumption of creative work is fundamental to improving your own creative and productive output - how would you possibly be able to incorporate new ideas if you didn’t have time to expose yourself to them, after all? Which is exactly why the executive class want to pressure the white collar employee class to not indulge in it - the aim of most policies and ‘corporate culture’ is to render all employees below a certain level as replaceable cogs in an assembly line that churns out the most low-input, high-sale-volume product that your VPs and marketing teams can engineer. The focus of most corporate action today is not in innovation or expanding into new markets but in cutting costs, eliminating competition, and eventually abandoning the company’s carcass when you’re done. Unfortunately, the same is broadly true of videogame publishers, which makes your comparison to Hollywood and appeals to the scope of the industry somewhat chilling. Executives who will happily dismantle studios in retaliation for them failing to meet an arbitrarily determined sales goal have no interest in the medium as a creative outlet or worthwhile past-time - they just want to squeeze the last egg out of the goose, pluck it, roast it, and then snatch up another. It’s not glorification of ‘hard work’ or a stiff-lipped resistance to the siren call of frivolity - it’s just looting.
On the other hand, I couldn’t agree more with underlining the value gaming provides to people, especially children, and most of all to the children of the modern age. All the biggest games for the youth, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, are all used as surrogates for the ‘natural’ ‘outside’ world most of them are denied access to. You can’t go play in the woods if you live in an urban or suburban neighborhood, you can’t meet with your friends and create miniaturized societies if you aren’t allowed to leave the house alone, and the only place you’re allowed to physically interact is in supervised and carefully managed settings like school and after-curricular activities. It should be no surprise that children find a way to recreate these things on their own, shielded from their relatively Luddite parents who are essentially locking them away, by finding totally artificial worlds to escape to where you can play Cops and Robbers [and your friend can’t just say ‘nuh uh’ when you shoot them], build secret lairs and go on long, aimless traipses through the wilderness, and, most fascinating, take on menial jobs and enforce laws.
I’ve seen so many adults complain that VR spaces like Horizon Worlds are infested with brats, all screaming slurs at you the instant you set foot in their realm, and insist that the parents must be awful, negligent monsters for allowing their children to inhabit even a virtual space without hovering over them, and the companies evil, data harvesting eldritch entities that are sucking their humanity out by not forcibly censoring them and enforcing good behavior enough. It’s not enough that we insulate children from all possible forms of physical harm or hardship, we should also be making sure they can’t be immature online, where there’s no limit on space and where you can just instantly teleport away from any stress or conflict. If anything, adults should be encouraging online activity, not as a replacement for real-world experiences, but as a desperate attempt to fill the gaping hole we’ve left in their upbringing where real-world experience should be.
That's a fair point re: the Protestant Work Ethic. The demonization of fun is likely a multifaceted problem with many causes, and leftover Puritanical currents may well not be the primary cause (though I still believe they form an undercurrent that at least informs all the other factors). And the Hollywood comparison is indeed chilling, especially if you look at the AAA space (indies are somewhat insulated from the corporate looting dynamics, but the tradeoff is that it's a much riskier space to work in, as the specter of total ruin is just one failed game away, compared to huge AAA studios [like, for example, Ubisoft] that put out one bomb after another, for years, before it all catches up to them).
And yeah, I feel for the kids these days. It also really annoys me how viciously society punishes parents who give their kids any freedom or independence (like, calling CPS because you let your kid walk a few blocks to the store?! Seriously, WTF), then condemn their parenting and even character when their kids can't later function independently or behave appropriately in public spaces. And you'd think that after COVID, people would be more understanding of the value digital spaces provide, especially to those without access to IRL activities. But I suppose self-righteousness is a hell of a drug.
This is such a great piece.
Couldn't agree more.
Glad you enjoyed it, Dylan!
"Setting aside the fact that Opera actually predated Bach by over a century, this response really lays bare the elitism that fuels so much anti-gaming sentiment. And, as if to further drive home the point, it also mirrors and invokes the classical music example that Kim cited (the divide between novels and comic books is another great example, but alas, one that will have to wait for another post)"
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the music and sound design part of video games and how video game music scores compare to film scores compare to modern symphonic or orchestral music compare to classical music (etc.), I'm curious what someone like Baruth would have to say about the composition work of Austin Wintory, Gareth Coker, Christopher Larkin, or Laurence Chapman (some of my very long list of favorite game composers).
Would they be considered inherently lesser than the famous film scores composers? Who are inherently lesser than modern symphonic composers or classical composers?
It's mind-boggling to me that people can look at video games without seeing their value from an artistic standpoint (visual, musical or story), just because it's "for fun." I'm not trying to imply that a game needs to "prove itself" artistically to be worthwhile by any means, but I can see where someone *might* try to draw weird lines between different forms of entertainment for their (now make sure to stick your nose in the air to get this right:) "artistic merits."
Are we supposed to be intentionally miserable at an opera or live orchestral performance? Should my wind ensemble not be playing John Williams medleys next to Ralph Vaughan Williams pieces?
It's so funny to me how people draw lines on these sorts of things (sometimes seemingly at random) when even basic poking at them shows they don't hold much weight.
Rambling thoughts concluded for now 😂
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
This is a great angle, Christena. Thanks for pointing it out! And you want to know a really funny wrinkle in all of this? It was actually video games that got *me* listening to classical music!
It was the most unlikely game, too: Earthworm Jim 2–you know, the wacky gross-out game straight out of the cringiest fever dream from the 90s. Two of the levels used Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, movements 1 and 3. Rendered in that tinny SNES sound, but they captivated me so much, and they’re still my favorite classical compositions to this day.
From there, I got into more Beethoven, then Bach, then Handel, then Vivaldi (who I share a birthday with!)… then MOTHER 3 cast another spell on me with Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 3, which then led me to Chopin, Liszt, Gershwin… a rabbit hole I’m still tumbling down today lol.
And it was all because of video games! So using the haters’ logic, does it still hold that playing games is “valueless” if playing a game also leads one to enjoy a classical (ie, one that “has value”) work or piece? Consuming “the classics” is not mutually exclusive of consuming more popular fare—and, as you mentioned, one is not more intrinsically worthy than the other.
And that’s not even taking into consideration the many original compositions and scores that grace video games. Mitsuda’s score of Chrono Trigger is right up there with John Williams, and Nobuo Uematsu basically provided the soundtrack to my teenage years. And of course there’s the inimitable Koji Kondo, especially with the Legend of Zelda—some of the most beautiful, moving, and rousing video game music ever made.
I’d certainly argue that Koji Kondo and Hans Zimmer are in the same league as Mozart. At this point, game scores are indistinguishable from movie scores, which are “classical” music as it’s popularly understood (basically, music played by an orchestra). Why, then, does the snobbery persist?
Oh man. Earthworm Jim! That's one of those that I go years without thinking about, then one day a random memory of it will hit me and I'll have to stop and process that that was a thing for 30 seconds before going about my day. We had the first one on Sega Genesis, but I don't remember what the music might have been like on it (looks like I have a new task for my afternoon).
What an interesting tonal/aesthetic clash. And what an amazing origin story for classical music interest!
I'm not as familiar with the Chrono Trigger soundtrack (though you're not the first person I've heard mention it, so clearly I need to fix the gap in my knowledge), but Koji Kondo's music has so much nostalgia for me. Oddly, I think that's what has kept me from sticking him in the same category in my head as other video game composers (more a sign that my head makes weird choices about how it categorizes things than anything else). Most of the game music scores I listen to regularly, I also use as writing soundtracks. But the Zelda music, especially, has so much other emotional attachment to it that I almost can't write with it. It's too hard for me to separate it from the original playing experience enough to be in my own fictional world rather than in Hyrule. And I think if it was a soundtrack to a less powerful game, it would almost distract from the gameplay.
Some Hans Zimmer and John Williams works sit in a similar space in my head because the music grabs enough of my attention that I have no chance of productively writing with it, the same way I can't write with a lot of classical music (but also, some is fine? Again, brain-sorting is weird). I probably draw a very slight distinction between "soundtrack" and "classical" in that way, but would avoid calling them by those names because 95% of the time because I think it has as much (or more) to do with how my brain processes them as it does with what they were intended for.
At some point I'd love to take the extensive amount of time it would require for me to sit down and figure out which traditionally classical pieces my brain interprets as "soundtracks" and what actual soundtracks my brain interprets as "classical", but I'm not sure it would result in any conclusions that have meaning to anyone outside my head 😅
Yeah, I know what you mean about not being able to work to Zelda music. Makes me want to just bask in it!
And you absolutely *have* to check out the Chrono Trigger soundtrack (or even better, play the game if you haven't already, it's the closest thing to a perfect game I've ever played). It's catchy, evocative, masterful. There are tons of great orchestral arrangements on YouTube and Spotify (start with Blake and/or Malcolm Robinson), and then there's the Chrono Trigger Musical, which also basically doubles as a plot summary through the lyrics and visuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvZ2dA5vgg8&list=PLU-TFjG0qugDt0qSNyhaKHnfbo8oi-5gJ
Enjoy!!
I'll definitely have to add the game to my games-to-play list!
The soundtrack is already in the pool of SNES games to look into soundtracks of when I do my Retro Tunesday SNES post in a couple months.
I agree with everything you said Jay. I've played video games for over a decade, and still find joy in doing so.
I'm currently learning Japanese, and so occasionally I will change the language in various games and study the grammar etc. Unfortunately, there will always be people standing against gaming, even if it means believing fake information.
However, similarly to that, everything seems to be increasingly more homogenised. From clothing and cars being the same colour palette, to food being sold in the same flavours, most fall into this trap. Then if someone doesn't fit into those boxes, they're commonly considered 'weird' or something.
Sorry for the long reply lol. Reading your post made me think! 😅😆
Yeah, I've definitely noticed how aesthetic output has "narrowed" in range over the years. There's data to back this up, too: https://x.com/culture_crit/status/1892322753887285455?s=46&t=_vSkDSTarhj6l1I6cyDWgg
Great idea to practice Japanese through playing games. It makes total sense, right? I suppose people will just believe what they want to believe, and unfortunately some folks want to believe that gaming is meaningless and/or harmful. But the silver lining is that eventually, people will pick another medium or hobby to scapegoat or demonize (you never see anyone trying to incite moral panics about movies these days, right?).
Oh, and don't worry about length. As you'll see if you stick around, long posts and replies are this newsletter's bread and butter! 🍞🧈
Good article, if still coming off a little defensive. I think the idea that ‘fun’ is disparaged in general is true, but I wouldn’t lay the blame on the distant echoes of crusty old ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ anymore. The current drive to homogenize culture is, I believe, a different beast. Fun or the consumption of creative work is fundamental to improving your own creative and productive output - how would you possibly be able to incorporate new ideas if you didn’t have time to expose yourself to them, after all? Which is exactly why the executive class want to pressure the white collar employee class to not indulge in it - the aim of most policies and ‘corporate culture’ is to render all employees below a certain level as replaceable cogs in an assembly line that churns out the most low-input, high-sale-volume product that your VPs and marketing teams can engineer. The focus of most corporate action today is not in innovation or expanding into new markets but in cutting costs, eliminating competition, and eventually abandoning the company’s carcass when you’re done. Unfortunately, the same is broadly true of videogame publishers, which makes your comparison to Hollywood and appeals to the scope of the industry somewhat chilling. Executives who will happily dismantle studios in retaliation for them failing to meet an arbitrarily determined sales goal have no interest in the medium as a creative outlet or worthwhile past-time - they just want to squeeze the last egg out of the goose, pluck it, roast it, and then snatch up another. It’s not glorification of ‘hard work’ or a stiff-lipped resistance to the siren call of frivolity - it’s just looting.
On the other hand, I couldn’t agree more with underlining the value gaming provides to people, especially children, and most of all to the children of the modern age. All the biggest games for the youth, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, are all used as surrogates for the ‘natural’ ‘outside’ world most of them are denied access to. You can’t go play in the woods if you live in an urban or suburban neighborhood, you can’t meet with your friends and create miniaturized societies if you aren’t allowed to leave the house alone, and the only place you’re allowed to physically interact is in supervised and carefully managed settings like school and after-curricular activities. It should be no surprise that children find a way to recreate these things on their own, shielded from their relatively Luddite parents who are essentially locking them away, by finding totally artificial worlds to escape to where you can play Cops and Robbers [and your friend can’t just say ‘nuh uh’ when you shoot them], build secret lairs and go on long, aimless traipses through the wilderness, and, most fascinating, take on menial jobs and enforce laws.
I’ve seen so many adults complain that VR spaces like Horizon Worlds are infested with brats, all screaming slurs at you the instant you set foot in their realm, and insist that the parents must be awful, negligent monsters for allowing their children to inhabit even a virtual space without hovering over them, and the companies evil, data harvesting eldritch entities that are sucking their humanity out by not forcibly censoring them and enforcing good behavior enough. It’s not enough that we insulate children from all possible forms of physical harm or hardship, we should also be making sure they can’t be immature online, where there’s no limit on space and where you can just instantly teleport away from any stress or conflict. If anything, adults should be encouraging online activity, not as a replacement for real-world experiences, but as a desperate attempt to fill the gaping hole we’ve left in their upbringing where real-world experience should be.
That's a fair point re: the Protestant Work Ethic. The demonization of fun is likely a multifaceted problem with many causes, and leftover Puritanical currents may well not be the primary cause (though I still believe they form an undercurrent that at least informs all the other factors). And the Hollywood comparison is indeed chilling, especially if you look at the AAA space (indies are somewhat insulated from the corporate looting dynamics, but the tradeoff is that it's a much riskier space to work in, as the specter of total ruin is just one failed game away, compared to huge AAA studios [like, for example, Ubisoft] that put out one bomb after another, for years, before it all catches up to them).
And yeah, I feel for the kids these days. It also really annoys me how viciously society punishes parents who give their kids any freedom or independence (like, calling CPS because you let your kid walk a few blocks to the store?! Seriously, WTF), then condemn their parenting and even character when their kids can't later function independently or behave appropriately in public spaces. And you'd think that after COVID, people would be more understanding of the value digital spaces provide, especially to those without access to IRL activities. But I suppose self-righteousness is a hell of a drug.
Appreciate your comment and insights!