The increasing popularity of games may hurt games as an art.

[Reasonable]

famousringo said:
It's not the increasing popularity (read: expanding games market) which threatens creative, artistic games. An expanding market makes more room for risky little niches to be served. A small market would choke out those niches thanks to the small customer base.

It's the increasing cost of developing games which is hampering creativity. A suit isn't going to invest 20 million dollars on some crazy game which has no proven market. He needs a reliable return on that much money. But he might be willing to spend 1 million or less on a big gamble, because big risks sometimes yield big rewards. That's why you see the most creative and risky games going to cheap platforms like PSN/XBLA/WiiWare, handheld gaming, and to a lesser degree, Wii retail.

Since handheld and downloadable games seem to be doing rather well, I wouldn't worry about the expanding business of games squeezing out creativity. In fact, I don't think gaming has ever been more creative than it is right now. Just because artsy games are rarely seen moving millions of units at a $60 price tag doesn't mean that they're in danger of dying out. Just don't ever expect them to show the production values of a blockbuster franchise.

Good post.  I agree with that.  Ideally, we're heading for a model that can support big commercial titles as well as artistic experiments and everything in-between.  It's not there yet, but the framework seems to be emerging nicely.