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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

> reading Shakespeare

This is pretty funny considering the connotation of Shakespeare's works at the time.

Something similar with video games in more recent times. Playing NES games has a slightly high-brow -- or at least higher-status -- connotation, compared to when the games were new. Now they're retro, which means playing them or similar games is more serious or something. Whereas back in their heyday, they were seen as almost entirely the domain of nerdy little boys, a silly thing for silly children.

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> This is pretty funny considering the connotation of Shakespeare's works at the time.

if my memory from music history class serves, this may be even more apt of a comparison than you realize. iirc what we call "classical music" was a reaction to the highly complex baroque style that preceded it, and the contemporary "old guard" looked down on it for it's simplicity and deviation from the older rules of harmony.

> This is pretty funny considering the connotation of Shakespeare's works at the time.

Well that's because, of course, at the time Shakespeare was highly accessible! The language was everyone's native language, and the cultural references were current.

Today it's basically a foreign language that requires a lot more effort to comprehend at a reasonable level, and a ton of cultural allusions that aren't part of our background anymore.

At an 8 year old kid I was uncontrollably laughing at one Shakespearean play. Like modern movies targeting families you don’t need to understand everything to enjoy them. They are not meant to be read, and most people are just exposed to the boring crap.

Not to mention all the dirty puns that are completely lost in modern pronunciation.

I wonder if it's less the perception of the art form that changing, than the people in position to voice high brow opinions rotating.

My parents still think of NES games as silly blocks on the silly TV. But their generation progressively gives up on writing articles in magazines or curating expositions in museums, whereas people now in their 40s who loved and still love NES games are now in charge.

NES games are the classical music of gaming. Sure, some people enjoy them, but I would bet that the vast majority would rather play 2019 AAA titles.

I dunno...I have kind of the opposite feeling about them. I enjoy playing nes games more often these days because I find them easier to get into. I turn it on press start and within about 10-30 seconds i'm playing a game. With AAA games replace the seconds with minutes.

Which oddly, is more like classical music to me. Modern music tends to be around 3 minutes, there's no long intros or different sections. It's just press play, bam music. With classical music, it's broken into movements, with long introductions, or interludes with single instruments or some such a thing.

I know that wasn't quite the point of the comparison, it was just an odd thought that came to mind.

It's not a perfect comparison, because arguably "NES" is now more of a style than a genre. For example, Shovel Knight is a NES-styled game, but its genre is action-platformer.

And "2019 AAA game" is neither a genre nor a style, so the comparison you're making here is even weirder.

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