THOUGHTS & OPINIONS.

Is it just me or have we been at a halt in gameplay development the past 5 years?

Game developers are so focused on the look of the games that they haven't spent much time on the actual gameplay. I guess the publishers are partly to blame. Because the pressure they put on the developers; meet xx/xx/xxxx deadline, game must look better than any other game, game must be super hyped...

But what ends up happening?...
Due to all the pressure we end up with games that aren't finished, have more looks than gameplay and we end up going back and just playing our old favorites (games that actually have gameplay > graphics) or just quit gaming all together.

Since we aren't buying or playing these newer Shooter games then game publishers are going to look at what is selling (counter strike, rts) and make more of those instead of backing Deathmatch games.

I have nothing against the push of graphic accomplishments. But when things like this hold back on the most important part of games (the gameplay!) it's disapointing.

Graphics sell copies of a game the first few months it is out... but gameplay sells games for years and years (Tetris for example).

SUM IT UP: Gameplay should always come first... everything else is second.

EDIT:
Did some more thinking...

I'm sure the doom 3 engine looks great but we won't really appreciate that for another year or two when most gamers can play it at 100fps and higher quality.

Sure Quake 3 didn't run that great on many pcs at first but no one cared about that because it had gameplay. Eventually most gamers were able to run it at a nice quality and high frame rates... but the gameplay always overshadowed that.