Maybe they’re trying to keep up with the same strategy with current generation consoles as they did 15 years ago.

A boost in hardwae and graphics was a major thing…Seeing the jump from NES to SuperNES was amazing, from hundreds of rooms that looked equal in metroid to super metroid which was amazing.

They’re leaving out a lot of people from videogames, olde people like my parents, younger kids, women markets.

So many games come out rated PG17, most are about guns blasts and blood. My little sister, she only bough a Gameboy and has 2 games, since no other games appeal to her.My dad likes playing burnout and rallisport challenge but it’s hard to him since he can’t keep the car on track for more than a minute. I even bought Zelda for Gamecube to my big sister, who spends too much time on it, but won’t play it much since she found it a little hard. She plays on gamecube the sonic collection, the original genesis 1 button sonic games.

And yeah, many games are missing a good story, from my 14 xbox games, only ninja gaiden and kotor actually HAVE a story..

I played the phsychonauts demo, i really liked it since it had the feeling to those adventure games like Day of the Tentacle. but it still costs like $700 here(65$ dollars) and i’m waiting till it’s on sale or cheaper. Games are way too expensive and my xbox has no mod chip. I like the geekness and hype of opening the new titles. but I haven’t been able to buy new games in a year.

There are a lot of ways to approach that–one of them is interactive cutscenes like KOTOR or a lot of RPGs do things. Dialogue trees, that sort of thing where you’re really being tasked with making decisions that will effect the gameplay in a variety of ways. These tend to be pretty simple but for instance in Planescape Torment they’re pretty complex. Depending on the degree of moral complexity the developer wants to put into the game. The other way to develop interactiivity in story is also seen in a lot of RPGs, particuarily first person RPGs is to give the player loads of options on how they could accomplish things. Talk to 10 players who finished Deus Ex on how they handeled the Naval base and they’ll likely give you all sorts of different tales and the reason for this is they all saw different oppurtunities and the why? is answered in your own head and it effects the story in a variety of ways. We really need to do more in both these areas because story ought not only be cutscenes and those sorts of things. I think the place we should be going isn’t as uninteractive as a book what I’m after is more or less an interactive book–something that has all the positive qualities of reading a book–exceptional character developmment, symbolism, a intracite plot etc. But what story your told will be reflective of the way the player approached things and interacted with the world.

And you point to GTA and say it’s just good for blowing stuff up but I loved Vice City for being a teriffic Homage to Scarface, mixing that with loads of personality, quality voicework and a lot of 80’s flavor. I hated GTA 3 for it’s anonymity, and frankly the open ended word was just Daggerfall with whores and guns as opposed to swords and spells.

And Head you’re right too games need not have stories. But it’s far easier to get a really powerful response with story than it is to get a powerful response pushing data around on a screen. I don’t care if it’s with a keyboard, joystick, gamepad, remote thingamajig, pushing data across a screen is only really special once in a great while. Multiplayer games can do without too because they focus on a social experience not so much the game itself but the with people aspect of gameplay. Sure if you can manage a Burnout 3, or a Ninja Gaiden or a Half-Life 2 then you can manage to make games worthwhile without story but those games are extremely special for their ability to do just that without a story worth mentioning. But those games are more the exception than the rule as it’s hard to make pushing data across a screen into something exciting even if it is on a new toy of a machine.

And I’ll believe MS will get a decent community management scheme together when they actually have one. Their has been 3 major releases of Live(1.0, 2.0 and 3.0) and dealing with jackals hasn’t been any of them.Instead they’ve added stuff like chat rooms, Live Arcade, clans and stuff such as that. I’m just not seeing anything which would indicate they’re willing to police their prescious subscriber base particuarily well. It’s been a serious complaint amongst Live Users since very early on but they’ve shown no inclanation to do this in their updates. It seems they’re willing to let people who pay the bill be as much of an aggravation as they choose. And we won’t even discuss how little sony does to enforce their online realms. I mean really these people made Everquest–griefing is a god given right isn’t it? And their isn’t a damned thing people should be able to do to keep them out.

For example: The three or four girls using the Nintendo controller as a fly swatter; do you really think that is a fifty dollar game?

Times that game be a hundred variations on the same gimmick that can be played in less than 10 seconds and you got yourself the next Warioware.

Also, you didn’t mention the guy aiming the controller like a gun, or the guy swinging the controller like a sword. With the analog stick attachment, entire free roaming 3rd/1st person action games can be built around this.