Long gone are the days of true innovation. No, I don't mean a sort of oooh gravity gun or eagle vision or any other minor crap like that, no I mean like when you were first able to jump with DirectX 2 or when Half-Life showed us what cinematic gameplay means. I am talking for the Industrial Revolution of Games the time when no one even dared think that abominations like mainstream or quick-time events could even hope to exist let alone become the necessity they are today. The glorious times of Final Fantasy VII, Wolfenstein 3D, DooM and oh so many more... Where are we going nowadays? Now more is spent on advertising then on the actual game. Now it is more important to be graphically superior than to posses any amount of originality. Todays games are made for newer gamers, they have thousands of little things to help people who have a negative amount of brain cells complete a game. Even the so-called hardcore gamers are now represented by 35-year old Americans who live in their parents basement and are proud of their legion of MMO characters and MP shooter leaderboard scores. Today you're either a no-life hardcore gamer or a brainless mainstream grinder drooling over the next piece of the same old **** labeled with a bigger number. Even once great companies are now forced to aim for the boobies+gore+shiny graphics > story+gameplay. For example what has happened to Valve? A company i respected so much is now forced to make games whose name looks supiciously like a registration plate like L4D2? Even the behemoths of RPG's like Bioware are forced to have the necesary amount of sex and blood all over the screen to succeed. We no longer play intriguing RPG's or puzzle games or even a tad more puzzle oriented platformers. No today we play shi like MW2, which is essentially the same as the first only re-skinned. Todays gameplay isn't a "let me stop and think or hmm what tactic should I use?" type but more like that of todays shooters- 4 hours worth of running around shooting while things explode every 5 seconds and you're shot or stunned in every mission, then take cover for 5 seconds while the blood on you're face magically drops to the ground and you cary on with you're mindless killing spree, oh and also it s called a campaign and you're supposed to pay a full retail price for it. Like in MW2 where if you take out the cutscenes and waiting for you're infinite health to regenerate you get 1 hour worth of shooting stuff. Even the MP in games is broken nowadays- you constantly get cursed by 10 year olds because you kill them by using something called TACTICS and doing something called THINKING. Because you're the type of guy who actually knows that shooting with a shotgun from 100 yards away isn't going to work. Fore example, yesterday I killed an entire team in Killzone 2 with the sniper rifle while they were trying to kill me with shotguns. My K/D ratio in UC2 is 5.89 for Christ's sake! It seems true gamers are dying and along with them most of the true games. Now game making is not an art but a form of business. They don't think about customer satisfaction but how to rob every last penny out of 'em! The true gamers- people who saved for months to buy a new PC component or played LAN games in computer clubs are now dying and are being replaced by mindless american 13 year-old r*tards and housewives. The days of gaming as we know it are coming to an end, and sadly all that remains for us is to hope that the few true and uncorrupted developers out there will be enough for us to overcome our grief. Or we could UNITE my brothers and show these console zombies who the real hardcore gamers are let us drive them of from their own turf-mindless MP shooters and our vivid kingdom shall live in harmony once again...Alas that isn't going to happen and as this dark fact is thrusted upon us by the mopolic corporate giants such as M$ and EA all we can do is accept our fate.