Quote by szcz:

Well, let's face it. Gaming is going down the shitter because of all this mass-produced, casual-friendly crap. A few gems like No More Heroes are not going to change things.
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This is why I've mostly given up on games and have sold off my whole collection.

May I paraphrase?

"AUGH people don't value the same things I do!  Gnash gnash fuckit I'm selling off all things precious to me!  That'll show 'em!"

Do the opinions of strangers really matter so much to you that without their validation you'll make yourself suffer?  I think more likely you sold it because you weren't interested in it like you used to be.  At least, I hope that's the case.

As far as I'm concerned gaming peaked with Robotron.  Everything else has been lesser, but so what?  No one cares.  We're the old men ranting and raving about how movies all started to suck when they went colour <spit> and all these johnny-come-latelies filling the theatres and paying for this modern shit are ruining it for everyone!

Geez.  Enjoy the games you've already got and let the kids have their play.  Otherwise it's true, and I'm sorry, but we will be those old men.

I don't want to be one of those.

In other media, “casual” products are more commonly referred to as “trash” — you have your trashy romance novels, your lip-synching boy bands, your cheesy reality tv and your god-awful Uwe Boll flicks. In other words, material that’s been cynically engineered with no goal beyond appealing to the lowest common denominator: people who aren’t literate in or knowledgeable about the medium enough to know better, and/or people who have terrible, terrible, appallingly terrible taste.

Then there’s the other half of the story: as developers, do you really want an audience so oblivious that they eagerly consume blatant clones of existing games? An audience so devoid of interest in game aesthetics that one of their most desired features is (apparently) jungle/Egyptian/Aztec-themed 3D backgrounds? An audience so lazy that almost any action or decision on the part of the player must result in success, coupled with ridiculous amounts of positive audio/visual feedback, lest the player become frustrated by the fact that they may have to learn or think in order to succeed.

Just because there’s money in it doesn’t mean that it’s morally or ethically right. If we continue to pander to the barely-game-literate, how will they ever become more literate? Learning isn’t always easy; sometimes it can be quite challenging. But isn’t the challenge what makes it so exhilarating?