Awor Szurkrarz said:
Wasn't the main problem that they started making games for specific kind of people, which happens to not be us?
They always made games for specific people. Today there is a very significant difference in the types of designers we have, and they are much more akin to marketing executives and movie producers.
Standout example among a sea of thousands: Todd Howard. He is a game designer in title only.
I know a lot of people who are playing since C64/NES/386 times and liked a lot of our classics which simply love where the industry went.
Basically they see it as evolution, that's what they want.
That's primarily because the industry has improved in many ways (not universally, but the majority) including graphics technology, music, SFX, VA, interface, polish/QA, etc. These are all things that have superficial appeal, can be appreciated at surface value rather than necessarily through deep analysis, and most important of all they draw people in much, much, much more easily.
The biggest problem is that this list has the most important one of all missing: game design. It is also important to note that RPGs often lag behind in these areas partly because they are tied up in some perpetual limbo of what the mainstream wants in their games and what the traditional/hardcore idealist preaches.
I met 6 "Fallout fans" in my class and somehow only 2 of them preferred the real Fallout and none of these 2 was versed in arguments against Fallout 2 and Fallout: Tactics.
And one of these 2 played all the next gen games and bought a fagbox.
Simply, most of old school gamers wanted the next-gen, they dreamed about it before it happened.
And now next-gen LARPers got their New Vegas, which apparently has many good features. The difference is that I never liked LARP simulators and always preferred tabletop-style games, which isn't the mythical difference between the strawman "retarded next-gen" and "elite old school".
A lot of people who like Oblivion and Fallout 3 apparently like it mostly because they are good hiking simulators. I can't blame them for that, because it was one of the very few things that I liked about Baldur's Gate 1.
Game design is much more abstract than graphics, audio and accessibility, the same goes for proper movie reviewing and critique: many people can recognise a good movie most of the time, but as soon as you ask them to explain what makes a movie so good, they will be at a complete loss, or alternatively they spew out something ridiculous and pseudo-intelligent. They also won't be able to isolate and create these strengths if you put them in a situation where they are required to reproduce a product with the same strengths.
I am only pointing out a few of the many paradoxical things about the way people are and why you cannot equate behaviour and response with understanding. This is why you need to rely on social trends to lead audiences as a social entity rather than as individuals - they simply aren't intelligent or educated enough to know for themselves.
Do a proper high quality survey and analysis of the data and you will see these truths coming through to the surface every time.