François

I think the problem was not smallness. He sites hiring more people and taking on more projects than they could manage. Staying small might have allowed them to survive.

License games might bring in the dough, but if you're development process is dysfunctional you will have a hard time working within the scheduling and content constraints of a license.

Plus, Halo Wars is practically a license game.

I like Mister Keighley and a handful of other gamer TV personalities, but having to watch them on G4 or Spike is too embarrassing. Those channels are cringe-inducingly juvenile, even by TV standards. I haven't watched TV in a while, so maybe this has already happened, but I formally request that someone produces a block of nightly game-related shows that cater to mature audiences. Plus ten points for developer interviews. Minus one million points for every too-hip-for-their-own-good-not-very-funny-wise-cracking host. Thank you.

The law seems impotent by itself, but maybe the plan is to follow-up later with a law forcing retailers advertise certain policies. Do legislators string together combo-attacks?

@Strategy_Panda True. Not all games need a strong narrative to work, but a charmingly simple story is much better (and cheaper) than a pitifully half-baked attempt (you know who you are).

I agree, developers went a little overboard with bells and whistles of simulation tech. I'm sure that greater realism and scale has made design and storytelling harder. But I don't think more power can ultimately be bad. Hopefully in time more developers will scale back their simulation to meet their design, or push their design to use the tech well.

@Evan Yes, that's the other problem. A successfully marketed game in the west needs some good ol' fashion sex, violence, and special effects, which generally makes the stories less serious. I think this is because most gamers can't prejudge the value of a game's design by the look of it. Not as well as people can prejudge a novel or movie.

For example, I love puzzle games. I know I will love Professor Layton. But all the reviews and videos do nothing to make me want it. I think games need to be played to really get their hooks in you.

I concede, Half-life 2 and it's episodes are very well-told as games. But they're the exception. I'm not saying deep, engrossing stories can't be told about combat situations. I'm just saying that it's a narrow space to tell stories in. Imagine if we only had action and horror movies.

I'm enjoying Fallout 3 as well, but I have little reason to care about the supporting characters, the ethical choices are exaggeratedly evil or altruistic, and the best moments are the dark humor, which is well-tread ground for game stories, and not what I would call deep or serious.

MGS games have great stories, except that they too often detracts from the game (by not letting you play it).

The problem is partially mechanical. For stories in games to be compelling, they must be told through the gameplay itself. But our most well-developed game mechanics simulate combat. So you either have a story about combat (which isn't a very deep subject), a story that detracts attention from the gameplay (and so must remain brief and simple to avoid frustrating the player), or quirky, underdeveloped mechanics.

Take Bully or the GTA series: story-driven games set among civilians. But the story contorts to find reasons to fight everyone, while non-violent fetch-quests and dating missions get old fast. The story can't be anything but silly.

If someone will just get on inventing an addictive gameplay mechanic that simulates _lamenting the human condition_ then we'll have a sweet Hamlet game.

Also, my proposal is to lower the legal age to two years for everything. Toddlers with tattoos and porn! C'mon America!