Videogames and traditional media (movies, TV) are converging, but not in the way Warren Spector had evisioned. The problem is that traditional media is converging towards games, rather than the other way around. It is simply easier and more profitable to dumb down things than to make tight, compact, compelling stories.
How many seasons has it been for the most profitable shows on TV- Lost, Heros, Prison Break, SG-1? They never seem to go anywhere. Normally sequels are bad because the original story was told so well that anything made afterwards feels tacked on and passe. Now films actually build the seeds for sequels into themselves. Why? Because it is easier to make a continuation of a placcid franchise than taking the effort to actually think up a new, exciting IP.
Why is the world still bonkers over Mario? It is precisely because it's a bad IP that it's able to perpetuate itself for so long. If I watched a new cartoon featuring a plumber, with mushroom baddies, pipes that go places, flying clouds with faces, a dinosaur baddy and a stock princess-in-distress-in-need-of-rescue I would say it's the most random, boring thing in the world. But in game form it's apparently celebrated as "original".
Not to rail on Mario per se, I love the games. But the stories are all the same. It is tepid, unoriginal things that last; and the TV and movie industries are already on the bandwagon.
