Hear, hear UniversalWolf!
Back a bit before that post: I'm getting very bummed out about the video game industry also. It just seems like there's nothing but FPSs, whether standard "Aliens are invading!" or "It's got swords and elves, so it's got to be an RPG" FPSs.
It's not helping that the video game industry is taking a big hint from the movie industry in terms of organization, promotion, funding and *ahem* "cost-benefit analysis." These are essentially the WORST things you can do if you're trying to make an interesting or artistically different game, and it goes a very long way to explaining why the industry is in the toilet.
It's sad when the very best games you can find are at least three or four years old....and even that's stretching it. It gets harder to find these good games too, so now a lot of younger players (damn it's weird to think of myself as an "older player...." I'm 28 years YOUNG, gaddamit!) won't get the chance to even learn about these games, let alone play them.
As a fer instance: Ultima. If you look reaaaaalllly hard you can find some of the older games out there, but outside of a few websites, and the incredibly rare (and on floppy disk besides) Ultima collections, it's damn near impossible to find anything earlier than Ultima Underworld....which is sort of past the series' prime, from what I hear.
There are, of course, other non-RPG examples, but Ultima stands out, especially considering that, despite the fact the games are from between ten to over twenty years old, they still have great gameplay that any developers or programmers could get lessons from. To say nothing of the players themselves.
Ah, but I'm getting on a bit of a rant. I'll head back to my old, cheapie jewel case games and mope some more.
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