99% of 8 and 16bit games ether have horrible gameplay or are super derivative tho. Have you ever gone back to play a "good" 8bit game (and not one you liked as a kid so have nostalgia for ether)? Not one of the few classics I mean just your average good game for the time, unless you enjoy borderline broken shit I doubt you would last long. It's easy for nostalgia goggles to filter out all the trash and leave only the classics, and also when you were a kid you have much higher tolerance for terrible broken gameplay. There are more people playing games today than ever before so the statement that games have got away from what makes games a great passtime makes no sense ether, and there are plenty of indie devs making games in 8 and 16 styles today if that is your jam there is just so much more variety today than ever before. 

Do you normally find it hard to comprehend? I never compared the games I compared specific game mechanics and their use..many games in the 80's used gravity and the like. Nintendo is the most derivative of the remaining 3 console makers.

Some games aren't about gameplay, that's true.

But to say that games in general are not about gameplay is just absurd, and I've played far too many excellent games recently to agree with that statement. BioShock Infinite was certainly about gameplay, as were Mass Effect 3, Far Cry 3, Dishonored, XCOM and Crusader Kings II. That didn't stop them from looking realistic and having good graphics - indeed, with the exception of CK2, I think they are all beautifully designed games.

I'm glad you enjoy Sly 4, and  its metascore shouldn't have any effect on your enjoyment of it. But looking at the game's reviews, not one of them says "this sucks, why doesn't it look more like real life" because that would be stupid and nobody thinks that. The criticisms seem to be that the gameplay is outdated, it plays it safe and the dialogue is weak. I don't know if those are right, because I haven't played it, but they have nothing to do with realism and almost everything to do with gameplay.

Yep, that's why the Wii sold only a mere 16 million units end of life, like the critics were predicting. The fun gameplay of games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, NSMBWii, etc just couldn't compete with the fancy graphics of the hardhitting Killzone franchise, which single handedly skyrocketed the PS3 into selling more than it's predecessor.

Oh wait.

Games have always been about gameplay, and they always will be about gameplay.

Sorry, but everything you just said is kind of pointless and immensely silly, in this man's view. YEAH, I kinda have gone back and played 8bit games, all the damn time. I own modern consoles, but I'm very much a "retro gamer" at heart. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and no, it isn't just nostalgia. That is a pisspoor excuse people use to try and disregard someone's argument, "Oh that's just nostalgia". No, in fact, almost all the games I loved as a kid are STILL great, because they hold up to the test of time, they're fun to play, they're challenging, and to me, they play like VIDEO GAMES, not $60 Quicktime Events. Saying that most 8bit, and even 16bit games (HUH?), had "horrible gameplay" or "were super derivative"..........that is not 99%, that's 100% your opinion, and one not shared by most gamers. I'd wager that most gamers who prefer modern games would still not wholly agree with that sentiment. Just because you apparently don't like side-scrollers, or "schmups", or whatever, doesn't mean they were or are "super derivative". What would you call most modern games? 90% (not an exaggeration) of the big games I saw shown at least year's E3 WERE super derivative, most of them involving a character with a gun, and all of those involving "shoot, find cover, shoot some more" gameplay mechanics that have been done to death over the last generation. If THAT isn't boring, uninspired, and derivative gameplay and game design I don't know what is.

Certainly, old side-scrolling games almost all involved running and jumping, the GOOD ones (and there were a lot), always tried to be creative and put their own spin on things, oftimes being very innovative in the process. I would argue that develors back then, not ALL (there were and always will be lazy, shitty developers), but a lot, would often employ a lot more effort and creativity because they had to, and because gaming wasn't so corporate and mainstream back then, so it was okay to take a risk and come up with some far out, ridiculous idea. Now most non-indie developers outside of Nintendo seem to play it safe, which is why you see the super-derivative "Shoot stuff" games I mentioned. There are certainly things about modern gaming that are "better", some I even like and am glad to see. But I still say that gaming and the games industry was better off back in the 8 and 16bit days, not because I'm nostalgic and pine for those times, but because it seems to me that they genuinely were. For my dollar, you just saw a hell of a lot more creativity and FUN in a lot of games from that era, whereas now if a game doesn't sell 2 million copies it's a "Flop", so developers are scared shitless to even bother BEING creative or taking risks.

You do realize what you're trying to argue, right? That a COUPLE (not "many") games, most notably Metal Storm, used a "look now I'm on the ceiling walking upside down" mechanic in their gameplay, and somehow Nintendo just stole that and Galaxy was "totally derivative"? Nothing really had been done quite like Galaxy's planetoid/gravity physics gameplay before or since. It was incredibly innovative, and not really derivative of anything. Saying that Nintendo is "the most derivative" of the 3 console makers when they're LITERALLY the only company that has been taking risks and trying new things, not just once or a couple of times, but all the time, not just with some of their game designs but with their hardware as well, is outright laughable.

And sorry, Half-Life is a good game, but trying to say the Gravity Gun is innovative....it was neat, but lifting something and moving it around isn't exactly groundbreaking. What Valve did with Portal was a hell of a lot more groundbreaking than that. It was a very average FPS with one neat, creative weapon in it. That's awesome, but trying to say THAT is more innovative than Super Mario Galaxy is quite a bit of a stretch. And while you give kudos to Ocarina of Time, which is great and all, quite frankly Nintendo have long-since outdone themselves in the Zelda department since that game.

Yes & no.

I voted yes because BF4 looked shit. Shit as in "done that a million times before". What is the point in having fantastic graphics and yet the storyline is still some bullshit involving you and your new bestest buddies taking on the man one henchman at a time? But I completely disagree with you saying we don't need reality simulators. What could be more immersive than VR? Devs have lost their way by recycling old gameplay rather than actually making large improvements to it. 

Using films as an example, it's as if gaming is currently stuck in some crappy B movie cycle. 

We need to go from this:

To this:

Or even better:

What does fill my with confidence however is how Quantic Dreams are talking more about getting emotionally involved with games, rather than seeing everything as just lifeless NPC's.

There´s some kind of weird logic here.

If games are not about gameplay, then they ARE NOT GAMES at all. They can be movies, animated stories, social tools , but not games. If there´s no gameplay at all, no challenge, they´re not games.

Of course graphics, art, music do matter to make the experience more pleasant, but without gameplay, games are not games at all. Does nobody wonder why Angry Birds, NSMB are such huge sucess? Sure its not about their graphics or music. It´s about their gameplay

Sorry my point wasn't that there weren't good games back then, or that there weren't origonal games. But I get sick of people acting like it was a perfect age with nothing but super awsome origonal games. there are literally thousands of 8-16bit games and most of them did suck and most of them were also super derivative just like games today if not more so. For every CoD wannabe modern war FPS released this generation there were 8/16-bit 10 (mostly licensed) platforming games or scrolling Beat 'em ups . Just because you don't like modern cover bassed 3rd person shooters doesn't mean that lots of modern 3rd person cover based shooters don't have unique elements that seperate one from another. The 8 and 16 bit generations were filled with crappy ports of arcade games with mechanics designed specifically to force people to spend more tokens in the arcades inelegantly shoved into a home console. And I am not sure why anyone would expect AAA blockbuster games that need to sell 2 million to all be super original and risky. full priced retail games made by 1-15 man teams don't exist anymore but those small team games are still getting made we just call it the indie scene now and there are more devs working in that space than ever producing all sorts of creative fun interesting games for reasonable prices to boot. AAA is it's own beast and to expect it to not be aimed at the mainstream and utalise popular mechanics and tropes is just retarded, it's like expecting a summer blockbuster action movie to be an edgy R rated arthouse flick. 

The great thing about todays market is that there is a huge veriaty in the types of games being made, from AAA blockbusters to hardcore retro style games made by a hundfull of people. Going back to just making small team games would not be anything but a regression any way you slice it. If you don't dig the big AAA style games there is plenty more out there and it's all more accessable than ever. 

If you mean the videogames industry, I can be more inclined to agree with you.  However, games are games.   Just stop looking to the videogames industry to focus on them.  Well, you can check the indie route out.

I will see how right you are though, because I am working on a book of 100 of my games, which are really games.