Right now, unfortunately, what's driving the game industry is graphics. The big game companies are making huge strides and throwing all their resources into big, awesome, in your face graphics for the attention deficite younger market. That's where the money is. They aren't concentrating on anything with depth. Depth is boring to the target market for the most part (What ? They have to read a manual !?! What kind of crap game is this ? etc...)
Writing has suffered (When was the last time you saw a game with an actual plotline ? They are so few and far between I could probably count them on one hand.)
Like the movie industries, they're focusing on big flashy special FX and pretty much doing games a two year old could write. Also, they tend to push games out the door unfinished now and only patch it up if it makes x amount of dollars.
Otherwise the feck off to the next project with bigger graphics and sound with a tiny budget for concept and actual writing.
And the average video gamer (The teenage to early 20's market) don't care about the substance of a game nowadays.. so long as they have their big flashy graphics.
The video games of the 80's were more innovative, enjoyable and interesting than 99% of the crap being produced now.
Damn I'm sounding like an old man.
