Just a heads up: Unnecessary cynicism and assumptions below!
I agree that it probably has more to do with the game makers themselves and how they might simply in the wrong industry, or more rather they couldn't make the grade in Hollywood so they decided that video games were the next best thing. Writers in particular fit this bill. They so badly want to create these grand and epic tales but more often than not writing in games is bland at best and laughable at worst. The overall setting and world have enough potential (thanks in part to the artists making it come to life) but when it comes to characters, plot, and dialogue the writing typically falls apart. This is why it's foolish to request a game be rated more on its story or viewed as something you'd pay for to go see in a theater - you're just asking for them to pick apart a sloppily written story.
Directors come next, particularly "creative directors," as they're the ones who love to harp up how "just like a movie" their game is. I know it's a tired target by now, but The Order: 1886 is a great example of putting literally everything else above gameplay, going so far as to go on the record saying that working on the actual game bits is a bit of a drag for them. This ties into why I think QTEs are so awful nowadays. They're a way to do a finishing more or are there merely to require the player to get the cutscene moving along, even if there's no way to fail them. It's like at some point the director said "hmm, we have a really long string of cutscenes here...how about you add in a couple of button prompts here and a walking segment there" in order to get some form of gameplay in. Shenmue at least had QTEs that you could fail and still progress through the game, and some were actually beneficial to the player in the form of a shortcut as opposed to something that you had to do.
I think this stems from the way the industry has attempted to mature in the past few years. No matter how mainstream the headlines say it is, the truth is somebody is far more likely to boast about the work they do for films than they would a video game (unless it's something most people would know, like CoD). Game journalists especially feel this way I think. In a way, it's almost as if they're in a way embarrassed that their line of work involves making or talking about video games as opposed to something like movies so they want to sort of make them like ones. This isn't true of everyone mind you. Some journalists probably love what they do and the talented 3D artists, sound engineers, and programmers no doubt have the sort of drive to create amazing things and continue to improve. It's just the ones that cannot ever accept that what they do in this medium will never win them an Oscar and something like The Order: 1886 is important because it shows that you cannot get away with pretty visuals and crap everything else.
I agree that it probably has more to do with the game makers themselves and how they might simply in the wrong industry, or more rather they couldn't make the grade in Hollywood so they decided that video games were the next best thing. Writers in particular fit this bill. They so badly want to create these grand and epic tales but more often than not writing in games is bland at best and laughable at worst. The overall setting and world have enough potential (thanks in part to the artists making it come to life) but when it comes to characters, plot, and dialogue the writing typically falls apart. This is why it's foolish to request a game be rated more on its story or viewed as something you'd pay for to go see in a theater - you're just asking for them to pick apart a sloppily written story.
Directors come next, particularly "creative directors," as they're the ones who love to harp up how "just like a movie" their game is. I know it's a tired target by now, but The Order: 1886 is a great example of putting literally everything else above gameplay, going so far as to go on the record saying that working on the actual game bits is a bit of a drag for them. This ties into why I think QTEs are so awful nowadays. They're a way to do a finishing more or are there merely to require the player to get the cutscene moving along, even if there's no way to fail them. It's like at some point the director said "hmm, we have a really long string of cutscenes here...how about you add in a couple of button prompts here and a walking segment there" in order to get some form of gameplay in. Shenmue at least had QTEs that you could fail and still progress through the game, and some were actually beneficial to the player in the form of a shortcut as opposed to something that you had to do.
I think this stems from the way the industry has attempted to mature in the past few years. No matter how mainstream the headlines say it is, the truth is somebody is far more likely to boast about the work they do for films than they would a video game (unless it's something most people would know, like CoD). Game journalists especially feel this way I think. In a way, it's almost as if they're in a way embarrassed that their line of work involves making or talking about video games as opposed to something like movies so they want to sort of make them like ones. This isn't true of everyone mind you. Some journalists probably love what they do and the talented 3D artists, sound engineers, and programmers no doubt have the sort of drive to create amazing things and continue to improve. It's just the ones that cannot ever accept that what they do in this medium will never win them an Oscar and something like The Order: 1886 is important because it shows that you cannot get away with pretty visuals and crap everything else.
