I hear your point about "auteur" games, that they are risky and can either be screwy or genius.
But I strongly disagree that sales are the only way to compare games objectively. Sales do not measure the quality of a game, because the sales figure is also a function of marketing and advertising. For example, Dark Sigil for the DS looks like it is going to be a great game, but everytime I walk into a store to reserve it, they give me a funny look because they don't have it in their system. It probably won't sell well.
Compare this to the marketing of Mario Kart Wii (don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic game), but any game is guaranteed to sell at least decently when it has banner ads on nytimes.com.
Can't you think of some games that are much better or worse than their sales figure? By anaylzing these games we can at least begin to forge a discourse of game theory and analysis based on something besides economic viability. I like Ph4nt's point about gameplay as art, but how what are the variables we can use to analyze gameplay? Learning curve? Replay value? Somehow I think there is something deeper...
