Asi Burak has quite the task ahead of him. The Israeli-born, Pennsylvania-based game developer is trying to court mainstream audiences into buying his titles. His first effort, PeaceMaker - an astonishingly sophisticated simulation of the Israel/Palestine conflict, wherein players become the president or prime minister of either nation and vie for peace - earned significant press coverage last year, and was even distributed by the Peres Center For Peace. But Burak doesn't feel the game reached his ideal audience - "people who watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; politically aware, socially conscious people" - because, ultimately, PeaceMaker was seen as a videogame. And according to that audience, Burak reasons, videogames are dumb.

He may have a point. Mainstream videogames may have all but conquered the 18-34 male demographic, and proven extremely pervasive throughout others, but their social stigma persists. One of the most obvious reasons for this - and one of the key points of the Byron Review (dfes.gov.uk/byronreview) - is the vast "generational gap" between gamers and non-gamers. Of course, this argument implies it's just a matter of time before MP Keith Vaz sits down to a game of Grand Theft Auto VII, but Burak believes that before this can ever be achieved, we need to "dismantle the notion of the 'gamer'". "If you think about it," he says, "you won't call someone a 'radio listener', or 'TV viewer' - I mean, you might, but everyone is, right? Everyone is a filmgoer. This idea that people are 'gamers' is going to have to change. Everyone should be a gamer!"

Playing to the masses

It's a sensible idea, but, as Burak notes, the difference between a gamer and a TV viewer is that the latter requires absolutely no skill or prior knowledge. Most games have several barriers to entry - the hardware required to run them, their cost and, importantly, the skills necessary to play and enjoy them. For someone who's played few videogames, even BioShock - often considered the apex in sophisticated interactive storytelling, and winner of last year's Bafta "Best Game" award - is a daunting experience. Ultimately, one could argue, the very reason videogames are so rarely taken seriously (other than by gamers, of course) is that only gamers know how to play them.

In the years before arguments about videogames' artistic and social value were ubiquitous, games were a lot more intuitive. Consider Pong, the first videogame to reach a mainstream audience. In it, players have just one task: do not miss the ball. As a gameplay concept it's somewhat crude, but Pong is nonetheless instantly accessible to anyone. And as an argument for the universal merits and appeal of videogames in general, it's fairly strong: after all, Pong in its various incarnations and compilation releases is without question one of the highest-selling videogames of all time, and also the best-known.

Even with the luxuries of more sophisticated technology available and the expectations that brings, many games have met similar (or even greater) success by remaining relatively spartan in their demands of the player. Pac-Man gave players two tasks: aim in the direction of pellets to accrue points, and aim away from ghosts to progress. It is still commercially viable and instantly recognisable by gamers and non-gamers alike.

Similarly, Super Mario Brothers, while giving players a much more detailed world to enjoy, was essentially about running to the right of the screen and jumping. The meagre number of tasks given to the player made understanding and playing (if not mastering) Super Mario Brothers a minor undertaking. As a result, Mario has become the de facto mascot of the videogame business, and the Mario franchise has sold more then 200m units.

Play Myst for me

On a smaller scale, this "less is more" philosophy has yielded significant returns, not only for developers but for the industry itself. Myst eschewed the keyboard completely; Cyan created a surrealistic and puzzle-heavy (but absolutely conflict-free) world that PC users navigated entirely using the mouse. And for all the criticism levelled at it years on, few other mainstream PC titles have been able to capture as large and diverse and audience as Myst managed.

More complex simulations have benefited from making interactivity instantly possible, rather than a learned skill. The Sims, for instance, shifted more than 50m units because it took Maxis' legacy of deep simulation gameplay - SimCity, SimEarth, SimLife, etc - and implemented it into a game about the minutiae of daily life. Men, women and children took to the game in unprecedented numbers, primarily because it was easy to grasp. Maxis did away with complex micromanagement with the Sims and focused on parts of life that players of all ages could understand.

The Sims achieved commercial dominance through clever game design, but Nintendo managed to conquer the console market by tackling the issue of accessibility at a hardware level. The Wii is unquestionably the most intuitive piece of videogaming technology ever; its motion-detection control system becomes, essentially, an extension of the player's body. Coupled with its range of titles - from traditional action games (Zelda: Twilight Princess) to exercise assistants (Wii Fit) - the Wii's uniquely physical control system has made a "lifestyle device" out of Nintendo's console. Which, one suspects, is exactly the perspective with which Burak wishes Wii players would see the rest of the games industry.

If these examples demonstrate anything to games developers, it is not that all should compromise complexity where it is due; rather, accessibility should be a high priority. Put simply, the longer it takes for someone to understand a game, the less likely it is that they'll stay to play it. And this chronic lack of understanding about the nature of interactive media will undoubtedly come to the fore yet again in the weeks and months after Grand Theft Auto IV's release. It will be accused of encouraging violence against women, and being a platform for dormant Ted Bundys to live out their wildest, most nightmarish fantasies - essentially, an exercise in sociopathy. It will be judged by those who have never played it, and who have no concept of its nature nor the nature of any games like it. And Burak's right: we only have ourselves to blame.