That's what I read out of ben_'s post: There may be allready a generation gap here? I can totally understand, that your friends wouldn't take it serious, because it's obvious that these games suck on the so many levels. Sure they're fun and cool and pretty neat looking, but there also so very boring and simple in so many ways. But when it comes to taking up the shakespearian spirit I just won't agree with you, I'll even say games will pick it up and they will push it so much further, that one day great movies and maybe - I'm not too deep in that part - literature will look like ancient forms of storytelling. It may be OUR form for the great stories to be told and we may see OUR own Shakespeare. I believe this because I know what this form of storytelling can do and I believe that I don't know the half of it. And it's also because I grew up with games, because I saw the change from 2d to 3d, because I saw that we don't need great graphics to tell great stories. That's from my point of view the biggest problem: Today graphic is so fucking important anything else just doesn't seem to count if the graphics are bombastic. And people believe that. But why? I mean we can play Monkey Island these days obviously, why can`t we make these games anymore? Why is there no game studio, that uses those "old" but beautiful style and gives us great stories? Great Adventures... Well the answer is so easy: There's no money to make.

I can see why so much people are so tired and I can understand why people say these are the best times for games. The problem is what ben_ said: The word "game" is wrong and missleading. But then... Is this really the problem?