Says the guy with the Duke Nukem avatar.

OT:  I dont agree with the OP.

Videogames are related to sports, card games, board games, toys ie GAMES.

They are not related to movies and fairytales.

You only have to look at some of the things that videogames killed to see what a real game is.

Now then, would forcing a storyline on any of these GAMES help them in any way?

Storylines and cutscenes are used to trick insecure adults into thinking they are not acting like children.

Wtf are you talking about? Adults aren't insecure about playing kids games when its fun. Too add, rated M games are NOT for children. Story or not.

Yes, you have gone crazy.

Topicstarter, you should give examples and not just talk in abstract.

I think super duper hardcore anything needs to be purged for the sake of everyone else.  But in general having normal hardcore games/gamers is fine.

Like take Magic the Gathering for example.  That game is great.  But eventually it comes to a point where you can't even compete if you're hardcore.  You need to be super duper hardcore by throwing all your money away to get every possible card etc etc...  And then the Card businessmen cater to those super duper hardcore fans and it just gets very hard to even enter into such a medium.

Same can be said of gaming.  But if this current environment says anything at all, it's that all types of gamer can exist.  Each platform has a fairly big chunk of the market with the HD twins and Wii having very different kinds of gamers.  So if there is a hardcore that is out of hand this gen., it doesn't mater because it opens up a market for just as many softcore people.  Last generation may not have been that way, but this generation certainly is a good one with people of all backgrounds.

M rated games not for kids?  So funny it hurts!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdhTlnAuoSo

The original Mortal Kombat predates the ESRB rating system.

Edit: And for the record, Tetris didn't kill the Rubik's Cube. In the first place, they're not the same kind of puzzle. In the second place, the Rubik's Cube still sell fantastically to this day, whihch Tetris can't claim as a standalone product. Thirdly, the Rubik's Cube is the best-selling game or toy of the past two centuries, having moved over 250 million units in the past forty years.

I know Mortal Kombat predates most international rating systems but it's also responsible for the creation of most them too.

You're right, Rubiks cube is unfair to compare to tetris, it was just a quick put together. The Rubik's cube was meant as a general representaton of physical puzzles lke tilt maze games and such.

You may also notice that I unfairly compared Mario Kart to Scalectrix. In fairness I should have used Gran Turismo or F1 and used a remote control car for Mario Kart. I also used the PS3 version of CoD when the 360 is obviously the choice for multiplayer although neither are hugely popular for their local multiplayer like cowboys n injuns is.

Rubik's cube only sold so many because of rebuys due to the stickers falling off and people smashing them against the floor in frustration (jk).

Edit: Tetris has averaged 20M/yr on cellphones alone for the past 5 years. Does the Rubik's cube still sell that well? Not arguing, genuinely interested.

Aside from crap made by Team Ninja (especially that Metroid disaster) and Kojima, I don't think games are trying harder to be more like movies in any respect and to say that games are "more boring than ever" shows an ignorance of what is available to us.  I put nearly 200 hours into the latter two Fallout games and have never experienced boredom or "Hollywoodish nonsense" in any sense in either game.  

Frankly, this generation, with it's longevity, creativity, and variety is likely to be one of the best--if not the best--ever.  Everything with the exception of the Wii has been just fantastic.  The Wii, of course, suffered the irony selling us on untold levels of creativity only to have less overall creative gameplay than anything else.  Games and storytelling has, everywhere but on the Wii, grown and become more mature and thoughtful than ever.  Titles like BioShock, Mass Effect, and Heavy Rain have taken mature storytelling and immersion to new levels.  

You reference Tetris and Minecraft as some kind of elements of "pure gaming bliss" as if modern elements of "pure gaming bliss" don't exist.  Like Stacking or Puzzle Quest--Super Meat Boy, n , Bangai-O, Sin & Punishment, Ilomilo, Limbo, Contra (4 & ReBirth), Left 4 Dead, Hexic, Meteos, Picross (regular and 3-D),etc.  These games all represent the kind of pure gaming joy you seem to think has been "lost in the wake of hardcore gaming."

The problem isn't hardcore gaming, or hardcore gamers.  The problem is the way the Wii created a blatant differentation between supposed "hardcore and casual" gaming.  There was a time when "video games were video games," and they could be enjoyed by anyone willing to give 'em the chance.  Gamers would play things like Jeopardy on the SNES or Playstation, but now, it's considered a "casual game" and has a stigma associated with it.  And because of Nintendo's half-assed focus (with crap like Wii Party, Wii Play, Wii Music, FlingSmash, etc), they created "casual gaming" and taught other developers that "casual games" should be cheap and crappy and simplistic.  

Then many of us hardcore gamers became defensive or elitist trying to seperate the industry from the casual plague that threatened to remove quality from games in order to dumb them down to sell to casual audiences.  

You are right, simply having "content" in a game doesn't necessarily mean the game will be good.  Again, I refer you to Metroid: Other M.  They tried to add "content" in the way of the most sexist and childish story ever put to pixels, and ignored the gameplay and atmosphere, and character of Samus Aran that has made her and the franchise so classic.  Same goes for Resident Evil 5.  Every decision put into that game took it farther and farther from the excellent horror titles of the franchises golden days.  They looked at RE4 and said, "action sells," ignoring all the things that made the franchise and RE4 so popular and so memorable.  Like the way that RE4 perfectly updated the classic RE horror setting without losing anything in the translation.

I haven't seen any kind of bizarre fanboy culture outside of ardent die-hard Wii fanboys who seem to be more or less, acting out of desperation for a system that has failed to live up to its potential, especially with online gaming, AAA titles, multiplatform titles, and third party gaming.  Okay, the PSP didn't quite live up to it's potential since Sony used it as a dumping ground for PS2 ports rather than as a stand-alone system, but the DS, Xbox360, and PS3 have all delivered some amazing hits.  Okay, so has the PSP (God of War, Patapon, Locoroco, to name a few).  The Wii does have some great games, but with it being so focused on the casual side, it's potential went squandered--and it created a divide in the industry that hasn't exactly been healthy.  Early on, in this generation, there were fanboys for all three companies, but all I ever see these days (outside of Wii fanboys), is a bunch of gamers talking about games.  

And the industry keeps adding more cylinders on which to keep firing.  This year keeps looking better and better.