You left out story.

Winning the GOTY award is actually more of an insult then praise, atleast in the last 5 years.

Not only that, I'd argue that the bolded suggestion is a legitimate argument, in principle at least. Like any other artform, gaming can fill many roles. It need not necessarily be, first and foremost, fun. Dramatic prose need not be cathartic, a comedy need not be conventionally humourous nor does painting necessarily need to be visually appealing.

I realize it's a fairly recent artform, and many people will claim to know just what its specific role is to provide - like in your case, you claim that it should engage the user, and above all, be fun. Say I were to fully accept that as true, isn't in true that everyone perceives what is fun differently than the next? Take movies for example, some find the explosions and thoughtlessness of a film like Transformers 2 preferable and more fun than the musings of say Daniel Day Lewis' character: Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (which I thought to be a riot! I hadn't had that much fun in a drama in some time. Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino had a similar affect on me).

However, if you're specifically talking about fun with the gameplay I think two thinks:

1. You're unfairly limiting this virtually limitless artform; and
2. You haven't actually tested the gameplay in Uncharted 2. While I prefer NSMB Wii (I think, the jury is still out on it for me) Uncharted 2 was wildly fun.

But that's beside the point, because I simply refuse to accept that as true (First sentence, second paragraph). On a personal level, I've appreciated games on both extremes as well as those that have a healthy mix of the two. For example, one of my favourite genres is the 2D platformer, with NSMBW being one of my favourite games of the last decade. Hardly a story worth mentioning, very little dialogue, poor characterisation, little atmosphere, but it is one helluva game. Ridiculously fun, very fresh, incredibly tight controls, etc. I love it. On the otherhand you have games like Monkey Island or Hotel Dusk or perhaps even Shadow of the Colossus that depend either solely or heavily on factors other than gamesplay to make them the amazing, unforgettable games that they are. Are they any less brilliant than NSMBW for doing so? Hell no. That's completely up to the user.

Sorry for the lengthy reply (I welcome any critiques, I think it's a great thing to discuss), I just can't agree that gameplay must always trump every other factor in the making of a brilliant game.

Edit: I thought I should perhaps add an example of a movie providing more than just a visual experience. Musicals. Any one. I mean, would you simply take the stance that if you want to listen to music you'd say 'just listen to music' and claim that a it being a musical (and having songs in the middle of dialogue) takes away from the movie experience?

Edit 2: Is anyone else's display messed up on VGChartz? All of my windows are pushed to the side, and the font has been made extremely small. Edit

Edit 3: Nevermind, it's apparently a Canadian thing. I have to stop editing.

@Pearljammer Problem with that as I pointed out, is no one has played every game ever, but people can tell that some games aren't going to be fun or good, I don't need to play Uncharted to know that I won't find it fun or engaging, seeing someone else playing it was enough for me to decide.

Secondly, I don't view gaming as art, I view it as entertainment pure and simple, trying to turn it into art is a pretension I don't care for.

A game can have other factors, but they shouldn't detract from the game, this is what happens in most cinematic games these features just pull one away, why do you think most people get bored with cutscenes and excessive dialogue in games.

Movies are a different medium than games, people try to compare and converge them, but I think that's a bad idea, the whole way a person relates to a movie vs a game is completely different, you don't control things in a movie like you do in games.

I JUST BOUGHT MY COPY TODAYYY

njkdnfkjdsnkl YAY!

Only problem is it IS a limited artform. Video games are an artform limited by purpose (the purpose being to PLAY the game). Every art form is limited by purpose, my copy of the movie "Bringing Out the Dead" has yet to pop out of the DVD player and give me a handjob.

I mean compare MGS4 to a movie with the same overall rating. Can you honestly say the storytelling is even in the same league? On the same planet? I sat down and watched a good chunk of the game and even a guy who is a huge MGS fan (the guy playing) laughed through 99% of it. "NO! MARRY ME!"

Video game writing is a horrible joke. I mean it is not just bad but it is so godawful horrible that skipping cinematics is the common practice among gamers.

There's a reason that video game stories suck. Stories are a passive artform.

Cutscenes if anything detract from a game.

A game is meant to be played, right? Why is there a part of the game where control is taken away from you and the direction of the story is ripped from your hands? How many cutscenes have you seen where the dude you've been controlling for the last 3 hours did something stupid you'd never do in a million years?

The best story telling in games in my experience hasn't been in what was told, but rather what wasn't told.  A great example is Bioshock. The fate of Rapture is largely left to the imagination. You see point A (the welcome to Rapture video on the way down) and point B (Rapture in present game time) but what lies in between is largely left to the imagination.

Another game that revolutionized story telling in games is Half Life 1. Control is never taken away from you (minus being carried off, but you can still look around).  Think about how much of that game is told to you in story, and how much is conveyed visually, or through "I heard X" "There's rumors of Y" or through gameplay.

When you bring up musicals, keep in mind that musicals almost universally have dancing going on at the same time (Paint your Wagon being the only acception I can think of) but even when dancing isn't going on the song is being conveyed visually. Imagine if every time a song started up in a musical the screen went black and the song just rolled and then the movie continued again after. That's basically what a cutscene is to a game, a blackout.

I would rather the setting (which I am moving around in) be the story, let the action (which I'm a part of) be the story, let the gameplay (which I control) be the story.  The cutscene rips you out of the setting, out of the action, and takes control away from you.

i read like the whole thread and just lol'ed through it

^Well considering your sig, Its pretty obvious you're biased towards Uncharted 2, so your lol's are irrelevant

why are they irrelevant? because i think that the best goty deserves the goty title?

Going by sigs, your comments should be irrelevant too.