WTF happened to games

Video games are not games anymore.  I don't know what they are, but they aren't games.  No matter how much of a graphical facade a video game has on the outside, the real game is about an abstract goal which is achieved through twitch skill or mental skill.  The true fun in video games comes from success and failure of doing these acts.  Any enjoyment from the graphical facade - like an emotionally engaging story or the splattering of gratuitous blood - is merely an added bonus and it is not meant to deliver the main 'fill' of the game.

Too many modern video games have an absolutely crap game underneath.  All these games have to offer is the graphical facade: the story, the characters, the explosions and the particle effects.  To make up for the shit gameplay these types of games try to succeed (and often do) by making the presentation beautiful so that no one stops to notice/care about the mentally retarded gameplay.  It is a cinematic video game disease.  It is especially common in post FF7 RPG's and post half-life FPS's.

Video gamers have already diverged into those who buy into empty shell graphical facades and those who don't.  I don't know what the fuck happened.  The empty shell camp seems to be winning too.

>>3
Actually, this hype stuff has been around for alot longer than FF7.

Here is the history on overhype in games.

The pre-NES era had some companies that try to have "more fluid animation" than others, even going as far as having movie licenses.  This resulted in the business crashing, with hundreds of crap titles like E.T. on Atari 2600.

NES came around, along with SEGA master system.  Hype kept Mario around, while Alex Kidd and Psycho Fox fell.

Then the 16-bit era where SEGA try to claim the Genesis (Mega Drive) was better with commercials such as the kid who becomes uber popular when getting the system and the "welcome to the next level" phrase.  Well, both systems became very well recieved, with a nice, even mix of intelligent gamers, like you and I, who choose good games and overhype fools who choose games because of the hype.

Then the Playstation came around.  This is when overhype got out of hand and companies started catering more and more to those who want the hype and less to people who want true gaming.

So you can't really blame FF7 or the hype because the hype always existed.  You can only blame the idiot game designers who only want hype.

FYI, I am not a Final Fail, I just thought that some more accurate information should be present about gaming hype.