Sid Meier, Video-Game Genius

http://kotaku.com/5492078/civilization-creator-explains-why-everything-game-devs-know-is-wrong

Perhaps one of the most insightful, and well thought out, lectures/speeches I've ever read. While I have minor disagreements based on personal preferences in some places, like the randomness of games (I think randomness can keep things fresh and force you to be more adaptable in your strategy, but there should still be a strong, clear structure to it) as a whole I think it really does highlight just about everything that's wrong with the video game world. Which is part of the reason I hold such mixed thoughts on Just Cause 2. On the one hand, I greatly dislike the control scheme, the combat is sort of meh, I'm easily frustrated by how few bullets I can use at a time, and the vehicle controls are not well designed (course I could be spoiled by GTA IV, I liked the driving controls for that), and gods-awful voice acting that makes me want to impale myself on a sword, but at the same time I love the simple fact that they are completely willing to destroy real-world physics for the sake of fun, create items that are completely non-existent just to toy with (grappling hook is so much fun), and know better than to actually, seriously try to make a story and cram it down our throats. Plus I actually liked the use of quicktime events in control panels. And it hits a good difficulty curve that makes it not especially difficult, but no cake walk.

Not to mention the fact that the commentary is brilliant at times as well. One person echoed my dislike of Quick-Time events for kill animations like in God of War (which I've always claimed was incredibly overrated, only played about half way through the first and considered it dull and uninspiring) or Darksiders.

To quote Kotaku commenter "ryoshi":

"Can someone please point this out to everybody who has made an action game this year, please? I understand that a videogame is an abstraction at best, but please, only abstract the parts that wouldn't be fun to play through myself. Don't give me single-buttons to execute powerful combos, don't make my character automatically react to cover, anddon't throw in quicktime-events, damnit. In recent years we've moved towards better graphics and animations and away from player control in most cases. In fact, the singular problem I have with the Just Cause 2 demo so far is the stupid QTE when you're hijacking a copter - I can shoot, I can grapple shit, why not let me handle that on my own? It's mostly excusable in that case, since clinging to the side of a helicopter is kind of a special case, but things like finishing off dudes with specials in GoW are frustrating. Sure, it's cool the first couple of times, but then you realize you're just mashing a button to execute an animation. (And before any pedantic idiots start groaning, "HURF DURF PUSHING BUTTONS IS WHAT VIDEOGAMES ARE," shut up, you know what I mean.)

Look at it this way: my favorite memory of Deus Ex was during my second playthrough, when I knew that after sending the signal to Paul all the UNATCO agents in that building would turn hostile. So I moved TNT crates around hole in the center of the level, rigged up some LAMs and gas grenades as mines, and then tossed another TNT crate down to the ground floor, creating an explosion that incinerated the entire UNATCO presence in the area. If I just had to hold down a button to rig up those explosives, or hit buttons in a sequence that pops up on screen, or anything of that sort, it's suddenly no longer memorable - it's no longer even my idea.

It's cool that games are moving towards some epic, cinematic stuff, but let's not forget that interactivity is the single thing separating a game from a movie to begin with. Every second that I have to push a button to complete some dumb canned animation is one less second I'm actually playing the game.

(Also: Please don't turn this into some QTE debate, I used them as an example for an overall paradigm shift. Yes, QTEs have their place. They're still used in lieu of actual gameplay in too many scenarios.)"