I actually agree, though for different reasons. I own probably twice as many DS games as I own for any other systems (barring perhaps PC) and I've been buying systems and games for 20 years. DS just has an excellent mix of completely wacky innovation type games, and traditional old-school style gameplay (including the rebirth of some genres I like, such as text adventures), and games I can show to my grandmother at social gatherings and catch her interest.
For that matter, DS is also well on its way to being the best-selling system of all time--you could argue it's the people's choice.
I started gaming when I was 3 or 4. When I was 6, I was learning to spell through King's Quest.
These numbers seem fine to me. Heck, stuff like Leapfrog is targeted at parents of 3-4 year olds. Similarly, I'd have no issue with a kid of any age trying to puzzle through a Brain Training game.
Unless the question is "at what age would you let a kid play games without parental monitoring"? The correct answer to that is probably "you shouldn't" (until they're basically grown up), the same way you shouldn't ignore what your kid's watching on television, what they're wearing, how late they're staying out, what they're writing in their online journal, etc. Granted, at a certain age you should stop censoring content (say, around 13-15 or so if you're confident in their maturity) but you should still talk things through with them.
I got Half Life 2 as part of the Orange Box. Maybe Portal and Team Fortress 2 spoiled me (since I played those two first) but I found HL2 rather dull and uninspiring, not to mention cluttered with glitches (I was surprised how often I'd get stuck in geometry).
Fun fact: the game industry already has one of the highest ratios of men getting sex change operations of any industry. I don't think your proposed solution will necessarily have the effect you're looking for.
"Non-interactive, long, drawn out, cinematic cut scenes.": Over 10 years old.
"Unrealistic release schedules.": I don't even know how old that one is.
"Timed exclusives.": 30 years old, and usually done for budgetary reasons.
"Rabid fanboi 360 versus PS3 frame by frame game comparisons.": 30 years old, albeit with different systems, and less in-detail, but I do remember fairly detailed comparisons of SNES/Genesis.
"The yearly $60 sports games that feature incremental improvements and roster changes.": 10+ years old.
I mean, not that these aren't good points; I agree with most of them. Seems weird calling them "recent", though.
I agree it's overrated--I mean I read online about a planned CNet protest related to it, firgued "why not--I'll stop by and see who's there, since CNet is a block from my office". A total of zero people showed up. I'd estimate there's maybe 10,000 people who even know about the incident, and the majority of them either don't care that much about it, or do care...but don't want to venture out of their parent's basement.
12-25, sure (or more realistically 12-19 or so). Most studies show that many girls stop playing games, whereas boys often don't (there are quite a few male gamers up through about 37 in age). Another interesting study: the most-played game among teenage girls is...Halo.
Teenagers play games. Later in life, though, if all your friends are watching soap operas or reality TV and not playing games, you'd have to be fairly hardcore to keep playing games (either that or get new friends...which if you do that due to gaming, then you're fairly hardcore anyway). Personally, probably half the games I play are games my friends were playing and showed me (usually IRL) and I expect most people are the same.
To a large extent, it's just a matter of breaking into the market and breaking stereotypes. A lot of women say they feel uncomfortable in an Electronics Boutique, the same way a lot of men say they feel uncomfortable in a women's clothing store--that's a psychological state I'd really like to see disappear.
I'm not sure if it was a bad list or a bad year, but I wasn't really impressed with the innovations. Puzzle Quest and Portal (#1 and #2) were great, yes, but #10-#3, not so much. Graphical updates in MMOs have been done before. Line Rider isn't exactly far from Kriby's Canvas Curse for DS. I was excited about the conversation trees when they were demoed in Mass Effect, showed them to a friend, and was told "oh yeah, Bioware usually does that kind of stuff with conversations" (I haven't played most Bioware games, but he's a fan so I assume he's right).
Actually, I'm leaning towards bad list, because Super Mario Galaxy feels like it should be mentioned. The individual gravity has been done slightly before, but usually just with a single spherical world, not several you can jump between. The star bits I thought were brilliant--most people complain about collecting that you have to run all the way across the world and it's just a time-waster, whereas you could collect these without wasting any time at all (if you wanted). You also keep them even if you die, as long as you beat the level, which means that if a level is killing you over and over, then you get a massive payout for finally beating it. This in turn increases the "I'm going to finish this level before I stop" compulsion even more.
In the same graph, we can see that either syringe gun tracking is bugged, or that medics have a _very_ hard time aiming with their syringe gun
My vote is bugged. I get plenty of kills with the syringe gun, and usually at more than the maximum range of, say, the flamethrower. My guess is that the Fireaxe and the Syringe Gun got their tracking mixed up, or something to that effect.
I had the perception that the RL was consistently getting noticably more criticals than most other weapons, but it appears that's not really the case.
You also get more crits the better you perform, which is likely why a lot of good Soldiers comment on high crit rate. The Rocket Launcher crit tests I've seen show a 5% crit rate for people who haven't gotten a kill in the past 20 seconds.
As we see from the same graph, the melee weapons all get far more criticals than other weapons. This probably accounts for some melee weapons being so high on the damage-per-hit graph. The highest melee weapons on the latter graph are the ones that inherently do more damage and also get more criticals
Probably the variance is just due to criticals or variance--the damage tests I've seen put all melee weapons in the same range (Except bat and Knife).
And the reason melee weapons seem to be so high is because they have a much lower firing rate, and also because most weapons deal considerably more damage at close range anyhow. It's the same reason the Pyro's Shotgun seems to do less than everyone else's in Valve's chart--it gets used at longer range on average.
Offhand, I think the bonesaw swings faster than the bottle, but I don't remember the difference being too great.
No, the reason why the Bonesaw and the Bat are popular is because the Medic and Scout are the two fastest moving classes, meaning they can actually chase people with melee weapons.
I find the opposite--Blu wins more than Red on Dustbowl/Gravel Pit. This is particularly noticeable on Gravel Pit, where the offence wins, teams switch sides, and the other team's offence wins. (Repeat five times for the tournament match I watched in Gravel Pit).
The going theory I've heard is the instant respawn servers that I do my best to avoid. The attacking team by design is supposed to have a faster respawn timer, which instant respawn servers negate, and at any rate the defending team always spawns right next to their last point.
While SMG still has some camera problems, I really don't see how you can call it worse than Mario 64. SMG I played for about 10 levels before I felt the need to adjust the camera myself. Mario 64 will swivel or flip the camera right before a big jump or when you're walking on a narrow beam, a problem I -never- had in SMG, and which you can NOT circumvent in Mario 64 by simply using the swivel function (you had to actually go to the zoomed-in Mario asscam if you wanted to run straight at your jump).
In all honesty, I don't see why you want more use of the swivel function, since it rarely helped at all in the bad camera locations (the camera would still rotate obnoxiously as you approached your jump). I could see complaining about the removal of the "directly behind Mario" cam, since as ugly as it was, it was guaranteed to be predictable.
I agree that the Storybook was well done. It was completely optional, and yet I visited it every time a new chapter was unlocked. It was just well-presented and appealing.
However, other story elements I thought were terrible, like the opening cutscene. They could have made that 10 seconds long, and dropped me into the first level, and I would be much happier. This isn't some "I hate required cutscenes in games" rant, because that's just not true (I'm an admin on a jRPG fansite). This isn't some "Mario games in-particular should never have required cutscenes", since there are Paper Mario cutscenes I find absolutely awesome. I just found the non-storybook cutscenes in Galaxy to be pointless and boring.
I don't think people expect it from ALL profit-oriented entities. Certainly people don't expect Sony to be honest in their press releases. People don't seem to expect much of anything out of some other news sources like IGN.
However Gamespot had a relatively good reputation; not spotless, but known for being more honest and a little more thorough than most reviewers. Or was a couple years ago, at least. Gerstman himself has been an extremely controversial and well-recognized figure for a long time now (he dates back 10 years). That he would be fired now sounds like a change of policy, and a change of policy by CNet (who owns several gaming sites including metacritic and gamerankings); it's certainly unsettling.
Yeah, this statement doesn't strike me as anything too new, personally. Hell, as a developer I find myself often with lower opinions of games than the general public I meet who's played them.
The Project Lead needs to stand up sometimes and say 'No, this isn't working, we need to stop and re-assess the situation'. It is entirely possible to deal with these problems - a decent Project Lead would do exactly that imho.
For the celebrity developers who get to release the game "when it's done", yes, this is an option. For the other 90% of the industry, the game's getting released in six months whether we like it or not; often working with broken technology is the best way to have a shippable product by due date.
There are important factors that you're missing, however.
Back in the 80s, if you decide your character should have a spinning kick instead of his current attack, sure that takes an hour or two at most. Nowadays if you decide your character should have a spinning kick, often you're throwing out a few weeks of work. Iteration time is just plain faster with low graphics situations. You might claim that developers should do a low-graphic version of their game first, iterate on it, and then put in the graphics, but that's not always an option. First of all, most publishers have deliverables, most game media want screenshots, and what are you going to do with all your artists in the mean time--fire them? Secondly, design and art need to work together; you'll see a lot of talks at GDC about using lighting cues to indicate to players what direction they need to go. There are some things you can design without art, and some things you can't.
The second big issue is funding. Most games nowadays are sequels, spinoffs to popular franchises, or licence titles. It's very hard to get funding for a new IP, unless you're a studio with a hardcore following already (and let's face it, stuff like Mass Effect is in some ways just Bioware Game #7--it's still selling off of name brand recognition). Budgets are high enough that companies don't like to take risks, so innovation is discouraged by many publishers.
I mean, don't get me wrong--the average quality of a game now is higher than 20 years ago. The best games now are higher quality than the best games 20 years ago. But on the other hand, the average number of genres popularized per year was much higher 20 years ago. The average game 20 years ago was easier to pick up and play and be having fun within ten minutes. While I don't agree with the nostalgic crowd per-se, their argument is not without some merit.
There are no laws against covering a song - so long as you pay the right royalties to the right places (which I am *sure* Activision isn't dumb enough to forego).
Activision fears being sued by graffiti artists. Activision fears doing parodies because videogames are still legally classified under "toys" rather than "art" so don't receive the same level of free speech protection as TV shows and movies. Activision is very lawsuit paranoid; they wouldn't make such a simple mistake.
You can play through every level of Super Mario Bros 3 in roughly three-four hours (not a speed run or anything, just someone who's decent with platformers, who dies periodically, but doesn't get completely stuck). I don't remember people complaining it was too short--in fact I remember people raving about how long it was.
A similar playthrough of Super Mario 64, getting all the stars, takes about 20 hours. Yet I've heard claim that there's less content in SM64--after all, there's 15 levels (and maybe 5-10 bonus levels) compared to around 80 levels for SMB3. SMB3 has more powerups. SMB3 has a larger variety of enemies. SMB3 has a two-player mode and more than one playable character.
time =/= quantity of content
That point aside, an article recently compared movie critics to game reviewers, saying that movies are reviewed as art, since they are reviewed as to whether they are worth our time, and games tend to be reviewed as products judged only in terms of whether they are worth our money (with the kind of stuff you'd expect from product comparisons like durability and output). I have a job--needing the money for games isn't my problem; finding the time is my problem.
My father was an old Unix hacker and had a number of games on an 8086 of...questionable legality, which is where I first played games. Later on he got into stuff like Sim City and Microsoft Flight Simulator, and I got into Nintendo consoles; there was some crossover (I liked Sim City, he liked Dr. Mario) but not a whole lot. By the time I got into disc systems like the PS1 there was almost a complete disconnect in our tastes (jRPGs weren't his thing, it seems).
I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if most parents didn't spend much time watching TV with their kids; my parents didn't spend much time at all watching cartoons with me, for instance.
Yet there seems to be a huge difference in how much people worry about each medium--I don't remember complaints from my parents about watching three hours of TV straight, but after an hour of videogames it was "Maybe you should take a break now". Granted, presumably modern parents are better-informed.
New Super Mario Bros sells 900,000 in the first week and lacks Co-Op. Super Mario Galaxy sells 250,000 in the first week and has Co-Op.
Seems crazy to conclude that Galaxy is getting a whole bunch of extra sales for the Co-Op feature (which I had barely even heard about in the previews, incidentally) when its launch is less impressive than previous Mario games.
Some scenes work very well as gameplay. Some scenes do not. I don't like generalizing with broad strokes like that.
Take an example everyone should be familiar with by now--Hot Coffee. You can make a sex minigame, but in this case it's mostly moving the stick back and forth (if I remember correctly) which is lame and annoying and induces tendenitis. The scene would have had more of an emotional impact as a cutscene. I'm not saying you couldn't make a deep, interesting sex game, I'm saying that not everybody who has a sex scene in their game should do so.
And that's just one example. In pure talking scenes where characters are making eye contact, it makes sense to take control of the camera and focus in on the character's face. This isn't really compatible with control.
The importance of Tetris is the the ART!? Are you kidding?
It has less story than most games. The pieces are all just squares. There is only 1 way to interact with the environment.
The only thing that might qualify it as art is the AMAZING music in the game. I didn't realize that was taken from 19th century Russian composers.
Now, whether you consider Tetris art, and whether you think the situation is comparable isn't really the point. The point is that simple is not bad, and simple certainly does not indicate a lack of art. If anything, it's the reverse--"trying to cram in too much content" often indicates lack of art.
I first heard people suggesting Portal was GotY a week or so ago. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I have to admit that there's some merit to the suggestion. The game is innovative, compelling all the way through, and Penny Arcade has already called it "the best thing on [Orange Box]", which puts it ahead of some very good games. (Obviously some people will disagree with PA, but personally it's a toss up between Portal and TF2 for me, so seems reasonable).
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I actually agree, though for different reasons. I own probably twice as many DS games as I own for any other systems (barring perhaps PC) and I've been buying systems and games for 20 years. DS just has an excellent mix of completely wacky innovation type games, and traditional old-school style gameplay (including the rebirth of some genres I like, such as text adventures), and games I can show to my grandmother at social gatherings and catch her interest. For that matter, DS is also well on its way to being the best-selling system of all time--you could argue it's the people's choice.
I started gaming when I was 3 or 4. When I was 6, I was learning to spell through King's Quest.
These numbers seem fine to me. Heck, stuff like Leapfrog is targeted at parents of 3-4 year olds. Similarly, I'd have no issue with a kid of any age trying to puzzle through a Brain Training game.
Unless the question is "at what age would you let a kid play games without parental monitoring"? The correct answer to that is probably "you shouldn't" (until they're basically grown up), the same way you shouldn't ignore what your kid's watching on television, what they're wearing, how late they're staying out, what they're writing in their online journal, etc. Granted, at a certain age you should stop censoring content (say, around 13-15 or so if you're confident in their maturity) but you should still talk things through with them.
I got Half Life 2 as part of the Orange Box. Maybe Portal and Team Fortress 2 spoiled me (since I played those two first) but I found HL2 rather dull and uninspiring, not to mention cluttered with glitches (I was surprised how often I'd get stuck in geometry).
Fun fact: the game industry already has one of the highest ratios of men getting sex change operations of any industry. I don't think your proposed solution will necessarily have the effect you're looking for.
"Non-interactive, long, drawn out, cinematic cut scenes.": Over 10 years old.
"Unrealistic release schedules.": I don't even know how old that one is.
"Timed exclusives.": 30 years old, and usually done for budgetary reasons.
"Rabid fanboi 360 versus PS3 frame by frame game comparisons.": 30 years old, albeit with different systems, and less in-detail, but I do remember fairly detailed comparisons of SNES/Genesis.
"The yearly $60 sports games that feature incremental improvements and roster changes.": 10+ years old.
I mean, not that these aren't good points; I agree with most of them. Seems weird calling them "recent", though.
I agree it's overrated--I mean I read online about a planned CNet protest related to it, firgued "why not--I'll stop by and see who's there, since CNet is a block from my office". A total of zero people showed up. I'd estimate there's maybe 10,000 people who even know about the incident, and the majority of them either don't care that much about it, or do care...but don't want to venture out of their parent's basement.
12-25, sure (or more realistically 12-19 or so). Most studies show that many girls stop playing games, whereas boys often don't (there are quite a few male gamers up through about 37 in age). Another interesting study: the most-played game among teenage girls is...Halo.
Teenagers play games. Later in life, though, if all your friends are watching soap operas or reality TV and not playing games, you'd have to be fairly hardcore to keep playing games (either that or get new friends...which if you do that due to gaming, then you're fairly hardcore anyway). Personally, probably half the games I play are games my friends were playing and showed me (usually IRL) and I expect most people are the same.
To a large extent, it's just a matter of breaking into the market and breaking stereotypes. A lot of women say they feel uncomfortable in an Electronics Boutique, the same way a lot of men say they feel uncomfortable in a women's clothing store--that's a psychological state I'd really like to see disappear.
I'm not sure if it was a bad list or a bad year, but I wasn't really impressed with the innovations. Puzzle Quest and Portal (#1 and #2) were great, yes, but #10-#3, not so much. Graphical updates in MMOs have been done before. Line Rider isn't exactly far from Kriby's Canvas Curse for DS. I was excited about the conversation trees when they were demoed in Mass Effect, showed them to a friend, and was told "oh yeah, Bioware usually does that kind of stuff with conversations" (I haven't played most Bioware games, but he's a fan so I assume he's right).
Actually, I'm leaning towards bad list, because Super Mario Galaxy feels like it should be mentioned. The individual gravity has been done slightly before, but usually just with a single spherical world, not several you can jump between. The star bits I thought were brilliant--most people complain about collecting that you have to run all the way across the world and it's just a time-waster, whereas you could collect these without wasting any time at all (if you wanted). You also keep them even if you die, as long as you beat the level, which means that if a level is killing you over and over, then you get a massive payout for finally beating it. This in turn increases the "I'm going to finish this level before I stop" compulsion even more.
And the reason melee weapons seem to be so high is because they have a much lower firing rate, and also because most weapons deal considerably more damage at close range anyhow. It's the same reason the Pyro's Shotgun seems to do less than everyone else's in Valve's chart--it gets used at longer range on average. I did some firing rate tests and all melee weapons seemed to have identical firing rate (except the bat).
No, the reason why the Bonesaw and the Bat are popular is because the Medic and Scout are the two fastest moving classes, meaning they can actually chase people with melee weapons.
I find the opposite--Blu wins more than Red on Dustbowl/Gravel Pit. This is particularly noticeable on Gravel Pit, where the offence wins, teams switch sides, and the other team's offence wins. (Repeat five times for the tournament match I watched in Gravel Pit).
The going theory I've heard is the instant respawn servers that I do my best to avoid. The attacking team by design is supposed to have a faster respawn timer, which instant respawn servers negate, and at any rate the defending team always spawns right next to their last point.
While SMG still has some camera problems, I really don't see how you can call it worse than Mario 64. SMG I played for about 10 levels before I felt the need to adjust the camera myself. Mario 64 will swivel or flip the camera right before a big jump or when you're walking on a narrow beam, a problem I -never- had in SMG, and which you can NOT circumvent in Mario 64 by simply using the swivel function (you had to actually go to the zoomed-in Mario asscam if you wanted to run straight at your jump).
In all honesty, I don't see why you want more use of the swivel function, since it rarely helped at all in the bad camera locations (the camera would still rotate obnoxiously as you approached your jump). I could see complaining about the removal of the "directly behind Mario" cam, since as ugly as it was, it was guaranteed to be predictable.
I agree that the Storybook was well done. It was completely optional, and yet I visited it every time a new chapter was unlocked. It was just well-presented and appealing. However, other story elements I thought were terrible, like the opening cutscene. They could have made that 10 seconds long, and dropped me into the first level, and I would be much happier. This isn't some "I hate required cutscenes in games" rant, because that's just not true (I'm an admin on a jRPG fansite). This isn't some "Mario games in-particular should never have required cutscenes", since there are Paper Mario cutscenes I find absolutely awesome. I just found the non-storybook cutscenes in Galaxy to be pointless and boring.
I don't think people expect it from ALL profit-oriented entities. Certainly people don't expect Sony to be honest in their press releases. People don't seem to expect much of anything out of some other news sources like IGN. However Gamespot had a relatively good reputation; not spotless, but known for being more honest and a little more thorough than most reviewers. Or was a couple years ago, at least. Gerstman himself has been an extremely controversial and well-recognized figure for a long time now (he dates back 10 years). That he would be fired now sounds like a change of policy, and a change of policy by CNet (who owns several gaming sites including metacritic and gamerankings); it's certainly unsettling.
Actually, probably the most plausible one I've heard is legalizing abortion leading to fewer unwanted children.
There are important factors that you're missing, however.
Back in the 80s, if you decide your character should have a spinning kick instead of his current attack, sure that takes an hour or two at most. Nowadays if you decide your character should have a spinning kick, often you're throwing out a few weeks of work. Iteration time is just plain faster with low graphics situations. You might claim that developers should do a low-graphic version of their game first, iterate on it, and then put in the graphics, but that's not always an option. First of all, most publishers have deliverables, most game media want screenshots, and what are you going to do with all your artists in the mean time--fire them? Secondly, design and art need to work together; you'll see a lot of talks at GDC about using lighting cues to indicate to players what direction they need to go. There are some things you can design without art, and some things you can't.
The second big issue is funding. Most games nowadays are sequels, spinoffs to popular franchises, or licence titles. It's very hard to get funding for a new IP, unless you're a studio with a hardcore following already (and let's face it, stuff like Mass Effect is in some ways just Bioware Game #7--it's still selling off of name brand recognition). Budgets are high enough that companies don't like to take risks, so innovation is discouraged by many publishers.
I mean, don't get me wrong--the average quality of a game now is higher than 20 years ago. The best games now are higher quality than the best games 20 years ago. But on the other hand, the average number of genres popularized per year was much higher 20 years ago. The average game 20 years ago was easier to pick up and play and be having fun within ten minutes. While I don't agree with the nostalgic crowd per-se, their argument is not without some merit.
You can play through every level of Super Mario Bros 3 in roughly three-four hours (not a speed run or anything, just someone who's decent with platformers, who dies periodically, but doesn't get completely stuck). I don't remember people complaining it was too short--in fact I remember people raving about how long it was.
A similar playthrough of Super Mario 64, getting all the stars, takes about 20 hours. Yet I've heard claim that there's less content in SM64--after all, there's 15 levels (and maybe 5-10 bonus levels) compared to around 80 levels for SMB3. SMB3 has more powerups. SMB3 has a larger variety of enemies. SMB3 has a two-player mode and more than one playable character.
time =/= quantity of content
That point aside, an article recently compared movie critics to game reviewers, saying that movies are reviewed as art, since they are reviewed as to whether they are worth our time, and games tend to be reviewed as products judged only in terms of whether they are worth our money (with the kind of stuff you'd expect from product comparisons like durability and output). I have a job--needing the money for games isn't my problem; finding the time is my problem.
My father was an old Unix hacker and had a number of games on an 8086 of...questionable legality, which is where I first played games. Later on he got into stuff like Sim City and Microsoft Flight Simulator, and I got into Nintendo consoles; there was some crossover (I liked Sim City, he liked Dr. Mario) but not a whole lot. By the time I got into disc systems like the PS1 there was almost a complete disconnect in our tastes (jRPGs weren't his thing, it seems).
I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if most parents didn't spend much time watching TV with their kids; my parents didn't spend much time at all watching cartoons with me, for instance.
Yet there seems to be a huge difference in how much people worry about each medium--I don't remember complaints from my parents about watching three hours of TV straight, but after an hour of videogames it was "Maybe you should take a break now". Granted, presumably modern parents are better-informed.
National Purchase Diary.
No, seriously.
Not to mention....
New Super Mario Bros sells 900,000 in the first week and lacks Co-Op.
Super Mario Galaxy sells 250,000 in the first week and has Co-Op.
Seems crazy to conclude that Galaxy is getting a whole bunch of extra sales for the Co-Op feature (which I had barely even heard about in the previews, incidentally) when its launch is less impressive than previous Mario games.
Some scenes work very well as gameplay. Some scenes do not. I don't like generalizing with broad strokes like that. Take an example everyone should be familiar with by now--Hot Coffee. You can make a sex minigame, but in this case it's mostly moving the stick back and forth (if I remember correctly) which is lame and annoying and induces tendenitis. The scene would have had more of an emotional impact as a cutscene. I'm not saying you couldn't make a deep, interesting sex game, I'm saying that not everybody who has a sex scene in their game should do so. And that's just one example. In pure talking scenes where characters are making eye contact, it makes sense to take control of the camera and focus in on the character's face. This isn't really compatible with control.
Yeah, GameFAQs tends to lag behind on news of launch dates:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps3/data/926596.html
Prior to this it was:
2007 (Japan)
Q1 2008 (US)
January 2008 (EU)
March 2008 (Aus)
And before that I believe there was a period of time when it was scheduled to come out in holiday 2007 in the US.
Let's spin this post back 20 years, shall we?
The importance of Tetris is the the ART!? Are you kidding?
It has less story than most games. The pieces are all just squares. There is only 1 way to interact with the environment.
The only thing that might qualify it as art is the AMAZING music in the game. I didn't realize that was taken from 19th century Russian composers.
Now, whether you consider Tetris art, and whether you think the situation is comparable isn't really the point. The point is that simple is not bad, and simple certainly does not indicate a lack of art. If anything, it's the reverse--"trying to cram in too much content" often indicates lack of art.
I first heard people suggesting Portal was GotY a week or so ago. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I have to admit that there's some merit to the suggestion. The game is innovative, compelling all the way through, and Penny Arcade has already called it "the best thing on [Orange Box]", which puts it ahead of some very good games. (Obviously some people will disagree with PA, but personally it's a toss up between Portal and TF2 for me, so seems reasonable).