I've played games since the Atari 2600. I've seen the growth of video games prior to the crash of '83, the saving of the industry by Nintendo, the maturing by Sega, Sony making it mainstream, and Microsoft making it social. So, I am one of many experts in video games as I have lived these experiences. I remember feeling that "video games are dead" in '83. They were dead. One day, arcades were flourishing, the next day, they were empty. Eveybody thought video games were a fad, like break dancing.

Then came Nintendo with Super Mario World. A game with great graphics, and a huge world that took days to explore. It was a fundamental change from brief visits to an arcade (which the Atari 2600 poorly emulated), to a bigger experience in the living room.

That change is what the industry needs right now.

DIshonored (and Bioshock Infinite) is an example of why the industry needs to change. On one level, it's an amazing game with deep mechanics, great voice acting, great art design, great writing, and high polish. On another level, it's nothing I haven't seen before. There is no mystery to the game.

I'm going from point "A" to point "B", back to point "A" to finish a quest. I'll raid chests along the way, and when the quest is done, I'll get an upgrade.

This game design is dead. I don't care how interactive the environment is, nor the number of contrived paths to get there.

Doing the same thing over-and-over gets boring. We've had this basic quest format for a decade or two.

We need to look at this contrived format as a "problem". If we see it as a problem then we can try to solve it.