I don't believe that. I think other mediums started out crappy storywise as well. Can't expect the Hitchhikers Guide videogame or a Dostojewsky to appear right in the first few decades. But also no reason to throw in the towel and expect Planescape to be even nearly as good as it could be.
I think videogames should have even better stories than movies and books, because you have more options to present it.

No, I said it is good among videogames. Doesn't mean it can't be surpassed by an order of magnitude by other games. I was not at all trying to say Planescape wouldn't make a good book or movie, doesn't even have to do anything with what I wanted to say.

No one's saying that Planescape couldn't be a better game than it already is. What I was trying to say that it's unfair to compare a videogame to a book or a movie because (generally speaking) they're very different narrative media.

I agree though that video games are suffering from a lack of good stories because this medium is still young and we're still trying to figure out how to tell good stories using an interactive way of engaging the audience. Yeah, I think it's unfair to expect us to put out something on the level of Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy or The Brothers Karamazov at this point, but video games have nevertheless produced some excellent examples of great storytelling.

On the "What is Art?" topic:

My favorite definition comes from Scott McCloud. He says that anything that is not needed for survival is art.

I agree completely.

Here is my favorite demonstration that he writes and draws:

http://machineinthedesert.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/mccloud_survival_reproduction_art_2.jpg?w=457&h=453

So what, your point is you can't compare scripts because their are presented in a different medium? Just because a story is in a computer game should not mean standards can be lower.I mean they are lower, but only because they don't matter as much to a game as to a book. Doesn't mean they couldn't be just as high.

Perfectly formulated, this is what I wanted to say but I couldn't put it into one sentence.

If the culture at large would claim that Gabriel Knight is not a classic, then the culture would uncultured. If the culture is the opinion of the majority, this could potentially lead to some problems because the majority of gamers today isn't the same as the majority of gamers 15+ years ago. Which means that we quickly need to make the classics list before the young people who never played the classics and therefor don't consider them classics completely marginalize and outnumber us and we then get a classics canon that includes Halo and Assassin's Creed and things like that.
As for Torment, I haven't finished it yet and every time I mention that someone comes to take away my gamer card so I guess it must certainly qualify as a canonical classic even if I haven't gotten to the good part of the game yet. Theoretically, everyone who praises that game could be wrong but I think it's unlikely. Even if some people might only like it for fear of being called uncultured if they didn't, I don't think there's any way one could -not- include Torment into the canonical classics Hall of Fame and survive.

Very true, and according to this it will probably be Licurg's lone responsibility if Sacrifice makes it into the canonical list!
But it certainly works that way, first there's a couple of cultists who create a wishlist for a game that isn't yet on GOG and they keep talking about it on the forums and then one day the game gets added and more members buy it and eventually, a gem rises from obscurity and into the Great Halls of Legend and Fame.

I'm hoping this will happen with The Neverhood which is why one can't talk too much about The Neverhood.
There's other very deserving games with less votes on their wishlist that also deserve to be peddled to the masses but The Neverhood is just a real fine choice to do that with.

Thanks, and I understand you completely because it's pretty much the same I feel about most threads. I often burn out on topics, which is strange because there's no obligation for anything and everything is entirely voluntary but sometimes I feel like I have to explain what I thought and then each point needs five more points to explain and it all fractals out, never to end and forever to enslave to further explanations. At some point it gets so much that one even thinks that's it I'm gonna go and play a game now. Yes, that radical!

First of all, my apologies for the delay in my response--I've been somewhat tired of late. ^^;

It both is and isn't. Consider movies: if you were to approach a broad group of people selected at random from the general public and asked them to name some movies that they considered to be "classics", would you be likely to get much overlap with the results of same question asked of a group of film students?

As I see it, there isn't just one culture, but rather (broadly speaking), many lesser cultures, some of which contribute (in part or in whole) to a broader culture--and each culture has its own "list of classics". The closest thing that we're likely to see to an "official" list is that compiled by those who study the medium, who seem likely to be aware of historical games.

(More accurately--albeit that this is a lay opinion, and I do stand for correction--I'd describe culture as a multi-dimensional field, rather than a simple set. If culture were colour, I feel that it would be inaccurate to say that a given community (such as a country) is all blue, another all green, and so on. Rather, while there might be tendencies and trends--community A leans towards blue on average, while community B leans towards green--we'd instead see waves of colour shading one into another; zooming in to the level of the individual, each would have their own individual colour, often similar to those around them--that's a part of what culture is, after all--but not homogeneous.)

On the other hand, isn't one of the hallmarks of a classic that it can stand the test of time? Surely, if the works that we hold up for consideration as classics are really up to the label, then modern audiences--or enthusiasts, at least--will still enjoy them? As to modern games, those that don't stand the test of time may make it onto new lists, but it seems likely that they'll fall prey to the same effect themselves, falling away as subsequent generations ignore them.

All right, stop there, hand over your card. ;P

More seriously, if you're not finding that you're enjoying it enough to keep playing, then that's fine. Different people have different tastes, and even classics aren't likely to be universally enjoyed.

I do rather like the mental image of groups of us standing around in black robes, chanting over a faintly glowing icon (in both senses of the word) hovering just above a low, round plinth. ^_^

I'm tempted to make a joke about one of my own entries, but since it involves a historical goddess I'm not sure of how I feel bout that. XD;

So, I'm guessing that you like The Neverhood? :P

(I've never actually played The Neverhood, myself; it doesn't really grab my interest, I fear.)