You kid--but it's the sad reality of most modern games (or at least the ones that generate the most press). Rather than just putting a new "pretty face" on the same old shooter concept that's been the norm for the past 15 or so years, I'd like to see game companies get back to innovative gameplay concepts. Interestingly, I see far more of that innovation coming from the indy publishers who don't do anything in the realm of "crazy 3d graphics" than I see coming from studios churning out "DOOM clone v 29345.2"
Yeah, unfortunately as you ramp up on art assets to get to the level of "crazy 3d graphics", the people holding the money tend to want more and more of a sure thing. 'DOOM clone v 29345.2' will inevitably sell boatloads. 'Toasty the toaster & the raspberry jam rebellion', not so much.
Which is why Braid and Minecraft did so well, even though they were largely programmed by single individuals instead of large teams. They took risks that the big studios wouldn't take.
True, but for every Braid, there were how many hundreds or thousands of failures? You can't blame the guys writing the huge cheques these days to expect likely success.
That being said, if they were smart, they'd be setting up some skunkworks projects on relatively small budgets....which I'm not aware of.
