I thought the article was more a complaint about how AAA gaming is turning to cinematics more and more to wow gamers, rather than gameplay.
From one point of view, gameplay is almost the entire point of gaming. But from another, it's the games with great storytelling that make up my absolute favourite games of all time (Planescape, Baldurs Gate, etc.)
I think there's a group of designers who realised that you could try and make a great story with minimal gameplay, hype it sky-high and it'll sell regardless. This seems to be the current AAA model. Just look at the steady dumbing down of the Mass Effect series from game to game, or the horrendous Dragon Age sequel. Mass Effect 2 had some amazing cinematic set pieces, great voice acting, but some of the most boring gameplay I've ever experienced. Linear cover shooter, tediously simple rock/paper/scissors mechanics, overly simple leveling system, etc.
Saying it's just nostalgia is trying to sweep all these concerns under the rug a bit too much. There are definite differences in emphasis in what designers are trying to do with the games, eg. whether it has a cinematic/storytelling focus or a gameplay focus. I think that a lot of older games got the balance right, simply because they didn't have the capability back then to make it "all style and no substance".
The issue is that the large publishers are making money by adopting the hollywood blockbuster model. But every dollar they spend on marketing a crappy cinematic game, is a dollar they could be spending on developing an actual decent game to play. If you had an actual decent game made, it would sell itself and generate enough reputation to sell all the sequels too - just look at how long the Call of Duty franchise has lasted off the back of COD4:MW.
This is why I generally avoid AAA titles nowadays, especially ones that have been advertised and hyped beyond belief (current example: Destiny). I just know that a couple of months after the launch, genuine reviews will be coming out about the game and it'll turn out to be disappointing.
I agree with the gist of your post but I think the author was making a deeper point with it.
It's not just that storytelling has taken over at the expense of gameplay, it's that we haven't even really developed our own storytelling capability.
When games tell stories they stop the action, freeze player agency, and go into full Hollywood mode. Game studios trip all over themselves to excitedly tell us about how their new technology will allow them Hollywood-like cinematic camera angles (see: Mass Effect), movie-quality camera effects. Hell, a lot of games even letterbox the screen to give it a more film-like quality.
It's one thing to take storytelling expertise and technique from cinema, it's another to clone it obsessively and completely fail to develop your own storytelling medium. Imagine if movies were invented only for "filmmakers" to simply film a book from top-down and a hand turning the pages!
One game I've been enjoying is Kentucky Route Zero - the story I find is fairly normal, but the way it's presented takes pretty clear inspiration from traditional stage plays. This is cool - even if it is still derivative, but at least it's taking another medium and adapting it appropriately to a game.
I completely agree with your point. I'm more pessimistic about AAA in general, though. AAA always tries to maximize superficials, minimize the hard stuff, and pay more money for marketing than for development. It's the same in games, novels, music and movies. And your grandma could have said the same about the AAA products of her time (music, theatre), right? It's not a surprise.
There are lots of great games below AAA and even some AAA titles have good content by surprise (for example the interactive movie "The Last of Us" was great in my eyes, not as a game but as a movie, which you can enjoy for free on Youtube).
Tastes have changed as well. An AAA title is expected to have mo-cap, cut scene, bleeding edge graphics as a baseline. Once you hit the baseline only then can you start to explore the often lacking innovations at the mechanic level.
It's frankly the main reason it is such a promising time for mid tier indie developers. Games with interesting mechanics and concepts ARE getting traction and rewarding risk taking. Modern game development studies are ripe for disruption.
From one point of view, gameplay is almost the entire point of gaming. But from another, it's the games with great storytelling that make up my absolute favourite games of all time (Planescape, Baldurs Gate, etc.)
I think there's a group of designers who realised that you could try and make a great story with minimal gameplay, hype it sky-high and it'll sell regardless. This seems to be the current AAA model. Just look at the steady dumbing down of the Mass Effect series from game to game, or the horrendous Dragon Age sequel. Mass Effect 2 had some amazing cinematic set pieces, great voice acting, but some of the most boring gameplay I've ever experienced. Linear cover shooter, tediously simple rock/paper/scissors mechanics, overly simple leveling system, etc.
Saying it's just nostalgia is trying to sweep all these concerns under the rug a bit too much. There are definite differences in emphasis in what designers are trying to do with the games, eg. whether it has a cinematic/storytelling focus or a gameplay focus. I think that a lot of older games got the balance right, simply because they didn't have the capability back then to make it "all style and no substance".
The issue is that the large publishers are making money by adopting the hollywood blockbuster model. But every dollar they spend on marketing a crappy cinematic game, is a dollar they could be spending on developing an actual decent game to play. If you had an actual decent game made, it would sell itself and generate enough reputation to sell all the sequels too - just look at how long the Call of Duty franchise has lasted off the back of COD4:MW.
This is why I generally avoid AAA titles nowadays, especially ones that have been advertised and hyped beyond belief (current example: Destiny). I just know that a couple of months after the launch, genuine reviews will be coming out about the game and it'll turn out to be disappointing.