Same reason why young kids love Barney, Rugrats, and Spongebob Squarepants.
They know how to market themselves to kids, and kids don’t ultimately care about quality, as long as they’re entertained.
They’re kids… they don’t need refined tastes.
Hey I’m a Sesame Street spawn and everybody else watched it…
Are you telling me that young Gehn didn’t have taste??!
I never said anything about young Gehn… 
Actually, though… Sesame Street is quality.
I’ve created a monster I am now powerless to stop. >:)
No one can deny that sex sells, which is a debate unto itself. Exploiting sex appeal for the sake of garnering more sales isn’t exactly the stuff great games are made of. And yet, this alone will sell a game?
Would Final Fantasy X-2 sell as many copies if the three main characters were precariously dressed men? Of course, without an actual game underneath all that gloss, gamers will ultimately be disappointed but rampant sex appeal can often propell a [great] game along its path to success.
Perhaps “majority” was overstating it a little. However, a good portion of gamers do prefer the simplicity of linear games. The “incredibly” linear nature of Splinter Cell Pandora Tommorow didn’t hurt its sales.
I’m just wondering how all these gaming trends will impact on future games. I’m not happy with the fate of games resting in the palm of the amorphous casual mainstream gamer.
That’s what I want to see. People with a sense of vision crafting the games they dream of making. Now games developers merely mirror mainstream tastes, instead of creating something new or reinventing something old. They are essentially owned by mass market gamers.
FFX-2 wouldn’t have sold if it was done by a different company and didn’t have the FF name. The inclusion of three female FF characters (well, two plus a new one) certainly didn’t hurt the sales, that’s for sure.
And yes, sex sells, but even the casual gamer is aware of when publishers are trying to sell a game just on sex. Why do you think BMX XXX bombed so horribly? There is a subtlety to the art of marketing, and that title crossed waaaaay over the line.
As for Splinter Cell, the story flow may be linear, but the way you play the game is not. Each situation allows the player to approach it from a myriad of ways. Violence, gadgetry, or just plain stealth. There are differing degrees of “open-endedness,” like the difference between GTA and Halo. GTA allows for sandbox style of gameplay, while Halo allows for freedom of gameplay within a linear construct.
You say that all games suck nowadays and that there’s nothing creative, yet we’re seeing some of the best games ever made in the last couple of years. I know I keep using these examples, but Ico, Halo, Half-Life, etc. etc. Do these not push the envelope? I’m confident that while the majority of games will be crappy to mediocre, there will be more than enough super quality titles to appease any mass market or hardcore fan.
This quote best sums up my feelings on the matter:
“As a result, some of the best minds in gaming (and their games), unwilling to conform to the rigors of mainstream game making, are floating in limbo, contemplating whether to keep fighting or just go find work…”
- Play Mag, April 2004, page 2
I don’t doubt that we’ll continue to see creative games of the highest quality, but only the richest companies can afford to be creative now. At least Sega is still around doing what it does best.
Sega isn’t doing what it does best. Not right now, though. I personally think Sega is still learning the ropes.
The difference between a third party developer and a first party is huge. A first party’s responsibility is to provide unique experiences, and to fill holes in the lineup. A third party’s primary responsibility is simply to survive.
I personally think the quote that you quoted is a bit skewed, though. The problem isn’t worldwide… it’s primarily happening in Japan. The Japanese style of game design is becoming more and more marginalized.
What?!
Anyways what are first/third partye developers.You’d assume I already knew this but I don’t.
After all these years…
Why the surprise about Half-Life?
As for first party, they are the ones that make the hardware.
Second party are independent developers that have exclusivity contracts with (or are partially owned by) first parties.
Third parties are developers that have no particular first party ties.
Could you give some examples please?
About Half-Life : I’m not even gonna give you the satisfaction!
Oh ok, (im such a nice guy… :P) this games never looked anything special imo.
It’s not how it looks, it’s how the game is built. It was one of the first games that used its design and interactivity to tell a story. There were no cutscenes (save for one), and the player was never taken out of the experience. They were Gordon Freeman. It truly took advantage of the medium (instead of just telling you the story, which any medium could do, it allowed you to be the story).
Halo is pretty much the spiritual successor to Half-Life in that respect, but I feel to a lesser degree. Hopefully Half Life 2 can live up to the legacy.
As for examples…
1st Party Developers:
Sony
Nintendo
Microsoft
2nd Party:
Rare
Polyphony
Bungie
3rd Party:
Capcom
Sega
Namco
Konami
EA
etc.
Ah I see…
Half Life : One word for this game in my mind.Blunt.And I wasn’t talking about the graphics myself.
Explain.
Ok I gotta be honest I didn’t finish the game (nor do i fully remember every aspect of it) but my memory tells me I was dissappointed at the the theme of the plot.
I don’t like the level design, the weapons, the enemies…
In a word : the esthetic (sp?)
The good thing about HL was CS : I don’t play it anymore but I had a lot of fun beating up my friends 
To me, CS was a great game in and of itself, but it is completely the antithesis of what HL was.
The story itself was as good as any other sci-fi story out there… but nothing special. It was in the way it was told that made it wonderful. You didn’t have prolonged cutscenes where other scientists spent 10 minutes explaining everything that just happened. You learned on the fly, you learned as you played. And every time you came across a puzzle or situation that required thought, if you paid enough attention, you could get enough clues visually to figure it out… and the solutions were never utterly bizarre like most games. They were logical because everything behaved the way it would in the real life.
For example (SPOILERS!), if you wanted to make the giant fan start up again, you followed the oxygen pipe to the the source and fixed the machine, then you followed the fuel pipe to the pump, and started it up again. There weren’t huge signs that said “FUEL PUMP THIS WAY!” or there wasn’t a cutscene telling you exactly where to go. The narration was delivered visually, and the developers trusted in the audience enough that they would understand this.
i didn’t MUCH like half-life but i agree about how the story was engineered.
do you think this can be accomplished in a genre other than FPS? it sounds like that was a large part of what you are talking about; the “being there”, the seeing it with your own eyes while still “in” the character.
and where do you think a game like deus ex: IW falls into this? there are cutscenes, you do see your character doing things, but with near constant choices in gameplay and dialogue, do you think you reach the same “oneness” with your character as in HL?
to a degree, morrowind and kotor might verge on the same phenomenon.
and i wasn’t sure what you meant when you said halo was the spiritual successor. i see a split in its story telling method. on the one hand you get cutscenes where the MC is pulling catch phrases, interacting with people and machines, flying vehicles around, and running from flood. but then on the other hand there are great parts like the opening to the silent cartographer, where though it is a cutscene, you are given the perspective of the MC and are it really puts you into the role of being one of the soldiers strapped into the pelican. or say, in the first tutorial where the techies want to run tests on you and you must actually play your part in it.
Deus Ex:IW and Halo are sort of in the same boat. They are designed in the same vein as HL, but they don’t go as far in their immersion. Same thing with KOTOR and Morrowind.
I think this type of storytelling is most easily accomplished in FP games just because, as you said, you are already physically inside the character’s head. However, it can be accomplished with other games as well. Aside from a few short cutscenes, Ico had much of the same quality. The entire story happens because you have to actively hold Yorda’s hand.