Yesterday we suggested that school-age children be forced to play certain video games as part of a program of cultural literacy. That was a little premature. Before we can ask parents to make sure their kids are playing important games, we need to define exactly which games are worthy of parent and educator endorsement.

A canon is a collection of books with such immense literary merit that they simply must be read in order for a person to consider himself educated. The Western Canon (as determined by tweed-jacketed Ivy professors such as Harold Bloom) includes works such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dante's Inferno, just about all of Shakespeare, plus a lot of other books by dead guys including Tolstoy, Ibsen, Dickens, Proust, Joyce, Kafka, and Beckett. These are the works that my professors endeavored to teach me about and that I subsequently endeavored (with the aid of beer) to forget.

Shouldn't the games industry have its own canon (or cannon, in a nod to both the industry's violence and general inability to spell)? Shouldn't game critics develop our own list of must-play games that any self-respecting game-snob must not just play, but understand through deconstruction and careful thought?

Assuming that it should and we should, questions remain. What games deserve a place in the canon and why? What's the process for adding to the list? What non-digital game media deserve a place in it because of their importance to the evolution of video games?

Anybody fired up about the idea? TheWesternCannon.org/com/net is available. It's totally a book waiting to be written.

Anyway, while we wait for the game industry's Bloom to step up to the plate, let's see whether we can cobble together a starting point for the list. Fire away!