Poll: Why "intellectual" games don't work.

[MammothBlade]

This formula has been upheld because games made in this way were interesting, even if they grabbed the audiences attention in a way so juvenile. "Intellectual" games do not have this luxury. They cannot play on these things and still have the label that they are pursuing. So the game has to resort to other devices to grab the audiences attention. This is not a bad thing, but it is never done correctly.

It is precedent that these games rely on mostly, if not entirely, on story to gain a players attention. Again, not a bad thing, and most games today should take a story to the face. But, by over relying on story you sacrifice gameplay. Ah... gameplay the thing that sets video games apart from other forms of entertainment (well that and immersion, but we will get to that later). More often then not a game with this label lets gameplay fall by the wayside. Much of the (sub)genre just does not get that if a game is not fun to play, the story might as well be as interesting as a wet dishcloth.

So, if I took an "intellectual" game and added gore, some naked women, and a reward system, would it be a good intellectual game?

You come across as quite uninformed of the state of gaming today. Do you not consider games such as Deus Ex to be intellectual in any way? That for one has a great and intelligent story intertwined with very immersive gameplay.

Wait, so is OP's assumption that video games in which you kill stuff can't be intellectual, or that games with a pretentious aesthetic are somehow automatically intellectual by virtue of their pretension?

Both, probably. Which is absolutely untrue. There's some sort of silly idea that the inclusion of violence and sex automatically makes a game unintellectual. There are quite a few films and books which have been branded very intellectual, but which feature themes of decadence, hedonism, and murder.

 

[Terminal Blue]

That game did quite well and people enjoyed it but it didn't kill off Quake or whatever.

Myst has apparently shipped 6 million units for PC to date.

Quake shipped 1.7 million.

In fact, the Half Life games and Battlefield 2 are the only FPS games to outsell Myst on the PC. Ever.

At the time Myst was released point and click adventure games were riding high, so that's by no means a guarantee that a game with Myst-like elements will do well in today's market, but to say there's no market for it at all would be slightly silly, and with indie budgets you don't have to sell a million copies.

Example, Bay 12 games is composed of 2 brothers. They've been working on the same game for 10 years now and allowing people to download the most recent builds for free, and they are clearly making enough purely from voluntary donations that they can afford to do that as a full time job. Small companies don't need to make big profits.