People always seem to assume game design is a zero-sum game, as if Miyamoto will be forced to draw polygons for 'even better than ever graphics' or write the story of the next Metroid game if he wasn't a game designer. The skillset for gameplay, graphics, and story are pretty much mutually exclusive so just because you do away with one, it doesn't mean you gain or lose any other component of the game.
As for whether it's viable to have a game without a story. Sure it is quite possible. You take a game like Grandia or Diablo 2 or Shining Force Neo, the game's story is pretty much an excuse for there to be more stuff to kill because the game evolves around the game engine, not the story. If there was no story in these aforementioned games, it wouldn't bother me very much, if at all (I'd ask to at least have the names of the characters I'm using, though). In fact consider there is no one I know of known for story-writing in games, it'd be far more likely to have a good game without a story as opposed to a good game without say, gameplay or graphics.
The problem is you're usually dealing with OVERWHELMING odds in the first place. The Dragon is supposed to win against your army of 40 or 20 guys 99 out of 100 times, if not more. Anyone with any knowledge of the fantasy genre knows this. It simply asks an impossible suspension of belief that you and 500,000 others are the chosen ones against an intelligent AI. Take a game like Metal Gear Solid, we know you don't just 'outsmart' an army of professional soldiers/terrorists led by superhuman leaders. It is more likely that a single US soldier take out an entire country (at least the average US soldier has access to better technology than the average nation's technology) than the average scenario of almost any warfare game, and yet we're supposed to believe that not only this is possible, but that the enemy is intelligent?
Even when the conditions are equal, such as a FPS or RTS game, you already know that the computer possesses certain qualities that you can never match. A computer can have far better hand-eye coordination, perfect ability to multi-task, and can predict the outcome of a fight before it happens (after all it has access to the same resolution algorithms as the game does). Because the computer already starts with a significant and possibly insurmountable advantage, it necessarily has to be a lot dumber than you for you to actually win.
The only way AI would have meaning if it you're in a situation where you are a lot stronger than the computer controlled opponent. Dynasty Warriors would be a good model for this. The average player character is at least as powerful as hundreds of underlings, so it is reasonable to expect the underlings to come up with something clever to whittle down your health. Intelligence is a tool to overcome lack of power, and the computer is very rarely at a position where it is actually weaker than you.
Is disturbing being in a dark place and have zombies jump down? Is Final Fantasy X disturbing where you're fighting in a world that is trapped in an eternal spiral toward doom? Is it disturbing that in Terranimga for the SNES, everything you do that you thought was supposed to help humanity only accelerated their destruction? I, for one, was pretty bothered by the intro where the earth's history is presented like a clock, and then the clock ticks to the 13th hour and falls apart. And yet both games are probably the story-book example of how hope springs eternal even in the darkest of hours.
The mood of a game is a result of its story-telling. If the underlying story isn't disturbing, putting more special effects isn't going to change anything, either. But if we assume there are books that can be disturbing to read, then certainly any game has at least as much access to present information as well as a book, so of course they can be, too.
First of all AI has no meaning in any game that's you against the world in some impossible odds, because if the opposition can actually think, then it is really impossible. For example you'll never see an AI in a MMORPG capable of coming up with the idea that killing whoever can heal is smart. If they're able to do so, then it is necessary the enemy can be prevented from doing this and in that case they might as well not be able to figure it out in the first place.
Now if you move to something that's 1 vs 1 like deathmatch, why would an AI capable of getting a headshot while doing a backflip need to know your tricks? For all practical purposes, it is superior to you already. In the end you're asking how many cute things the AI can pretend doing while facing an inevitable demise. You can only pretend that it's trying to do something for long but eventually the player will either win and realize that it's not really doing anything, or the player won't win and in that case you might as well start with an AI with just the normal perfect qualities you'd expect.
PS and PS2 absolutely dominated their generation (yes I'm aware Nintendo may have made more money). PS3 strikes me as too expensive but then I'm not the average gamer so it's not up to me to decide if Sony's strategy is sound. If their strategy is right, then who are we to tell them not to do it? And if it's wrong, it's not my problem either.
Fansubs is only better because it caters to the 'otaku' side of the fans. You simply can't translate a Japanese wordplay on the fact that many of the words in the culture sound alike and meaning is contextual because very few English words exhibit the same property. Likewise honorifics have no meaning when you're dealing with a world that's supposed to be mostly composed of people around high school age and younger. To the American it simply makes no sense why such characters would be using any kind of title at all. In American English, a simple name or Mr./Mrs. suffices for 99% of the situation you'd need to use an honorific in Anime. There's no doubt most localization efforts aren't great, to be sure, but I don't see why fansubs gets points for translating things that simply do not have meaning when translated.
Well there are giant, ubiquitous pirating companies in China/Taiwan that pretty much packages everything as well as the original except for a logo of SM or whatever somewhere, and if you don't know better you'd just figure they must be whoever that packages the CDs. It is quite possible most of the buyers aren't aware of this because the US/European world simply is not accustomed to dealing with a society where 90%+ of the goods are pirated.
Also, Taiwan and China gets the legal, copyrighted stuff for cheaper because the copyright owners figured since everything is going to be pirated anyway they might as well try to get whatever they can versus nothing. For example it'd be cheaper to import a legal, copyrighted manga from Taiwan compared to buying one at Japan. Of course, those items typically have a warning like 'no for resale anywhere else' but of course no one really pays attention to that. I don't think this is the case here, but it is possible to get some pretty cheap and legal stuff simply because the copyright owners have no other choice.
I've known Chinese stores that got busted for selling bootlegged Japanese Anime/games. The reason you don't see this happening very often is due to a few things:
1. These stores actually try to hide the fact they're selling illegal stuff. The bootleg CDs are usually hidden back somewhere with real games/anime on display counter. If you don't know better, most of the Chinese stores selling bootlegged stuff actually looks like a legit operation. This is pretty different from busting a torrent site where you might as well have a sign that says 'come here and download free stuff!' or some pseudo legal stuff that doesn't really make a good attempt to hide the fact that what's being done is illegal.
2. Chinese stores usually only sell to the Chinese. If you're not Chinese chances are pretty good you won't be going to a Chinese store to get anime/games in the first place. In fact there's a good chance the Chinese clerk just won't sell you the bootlegged stuff they stashed behind the counter. Seeing piracy is rampant in China/Taiwan/various Asian countries, it should not surprise you that the average Chinese has even weaker beliefs in copyright compared to the average American. Therefore it is less likely for a Chinese to turn someone over for piracy.
As far as I'm aware there are very few Anime anything that openly supports fansubs. If fansubs is clearly a good idea some Anime makers would've figured this out by now and say they support it. So, at best no one is really sure if fansubs help or not. Since no one knows better, I don't know why it gives the consumer the right to say this is definitely the right way. By the way, fansubs have very high graphical quality now so better quality isn't a good argument to buying the real thing.
The difference between Anime and other mainstream stuff is that Anime is still obscure enough that it is hard to tell when you get a lost sales. If you pirate a mainstream blockbuster whatever, the owner can be pretty sure that since this is popular you probably would've bought it even if you claim you would not, and count that as a lost sale due to piracy. On the other hand it is much harder to say this for Anime, especially obscure Anime. This doesn't mean it's right, of course, but the copyright owner is less likely to go after you when it's not clear they're losing money (or any amount that is meaningful to pursue).
The graph doesn't show any unusual drops that can't be explained by the presence of WoW. Unless you're one of those PR guys in SOE that believes there's no such thing as a negative effect from competition (this is different from the fact that the MMORPG is not a zero-sum game), clearly the numbers for your subscription has to go down over time after it peaks because your game is increasingly obselete compared to newer ones, as well as increasing competition. At some point WoW's numbers will start going down too and they'll be losing even more money when it does, but it doesn't mean that heads will roll if WoW's numbers ever stop going up.
Although WoW may indeed be the first MMORPG for most, there's considerable inertia that stops you from leaving a MMORPG and going back to a RTS or FPS or whatever. The persistent aspect of a MMORPG means in order to switch to anything, the alternative has to be better. MMORPG pretty much always beats any other genre if you look at playing time as an investment. If I play WoW for 100 hours I can be sure that no matter how boring/painful that 100 hour is, I'll walk away with considerable benefits at the end to my character for the effort involved. This simply isn't true for other types of games unless one is highly competitive.
Therefore to beat a MMORPG, the alternative's gameplay has to be significantly better to make up for that. A title such as Starcraft 2 certainly can make enough people switch back, but there simply isn't a lot of such titles. If WoW is medicore and most games are medicore also, you might as well go with the medicore game that rewards you for playing.
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As for whether it's viable to have a game without a story. Sure it is quite possible. You take a game like Grandia or Diablo 2 or Shining Force Neo, the game's story is pretty much an excuse for there to be more stuff to kill because the game evolves around the game engine, not the story. If there was no story in these aforementioned games, it wouldn't bother me very much, if at all (I'd ask to at least have the names of the characters I'm using, though). In fact consider there is no one I know of known for story-writing in games, it'd be far more likely to have a good game without a story as opposed to a good game without say, gameplay or graphics.
Even when the conditions are equal, such as a FPS or RTS game, you already know that the computer possesses certain qualities that you can never match. A computer can have far better hand-eye coordination, perfect ability to multi-task, and can predict the outcome of a fight before it happens (after all it has access to the same resolution algorithms as the game does). Because the computer already starts with a significant and possibly insurmountable advantage, it necessarily has to be a lot dumber than you for you to actually win.
The only way AI would have meaning if it you're in a situation where you are a lot stronger than the computer controlled opponent. Dynasty Warriors would be a good model for this. The average player character is at least as powerful as hundreds of underlings, so it is reasonable to expect the underlings to come up with something clever to whittle down your health. Intelligence is a tool to overcome lack of power, and the computer is very rarely at a position where it is actually weaker than you.
The mood of a game is a result of its story-telling. If the underlying story isn't disturbing, putting more special effects isn't going to change anything, either. But if we assume there are books that can be disturbing to read, then certainly any game has at least as much access to present information as well as a book, so of course they can be, too.
First of all AI has no meaning in any game that's you against the world in some impossible odds, because if the opposition can actually think, then it is really impossible. For example you'll never see an AI in a MMORPG capable of coming up with the idea that killing whoever can heal is smart. If they're able to do so, then it is necessary the enemy can be prevented from doing this and in that case they might as well not be able to figure it out in the first place. Now if you move to something that's 1 vs 1 like deathmatch, why would an AI capable of getting a headshot while doing a backflip need to know your tricks? For all practical purposes, it is superior to you already. In the end you're asking how many cute things the AI can pretend doing while facing an inevitable demise. You can only pretend that it's trying to do something for long but eventually the player will either win and realize that it's not really doing anything, or the player won't win and in that case you might as well start with an AI with just the normal perfect qualities you'd expect.
PS and PS2 absolutely dominated their generation (yes I'm aware Nintendo may have made more money). PS3 strikes me as too expensive but then I'm not the average gamer so it's not up to me to decide if Sony's strategy is sound. If their strategy is right, then who are we to tell them not to do it? And if it's wrong, it's not my problem either.
Fansubs is only better because it caters to the 'otaku' side of the fans. You simply can't translate a Japanese wordplay on the fact that many of the words in the culture sound alike and meaning is contextual because very few English words exhibit the same property. Likewise honorifics have no meaning when you're dealing with a world that's supposed to be mostly composed of people around high school age and younger. To the American it simply makes no sense why such characters would be using any kind of title at all. In American English, a simple name or Mr./Mrs. suffices for 99% of the situation you'd need to use an honorific in Anime. There's no doubt most localization efforts aren't great, to be sure, but I don't see why fansubs gets points for translating things that simply do not have meaning when translated.
Well there are giant, ubiquitous pirating companies in China/Taiwan that pretty much packages everything as well as the original except for a logo of SM or whatever somewhere, and if you don't know better you'd just figure they must be whoever that packages the CDs. It is quite possible most of the buyers aren't aware of this because the US/European world simply is not accustomed to dealing with a society where 90%+ of the goods are pirated. Also, Taiwan and China gets the legal, copyrighted stuff for cheaper because the copyright owners figured since everything is going to be pirated anyway they might as well try to get whatever they can versus nothing. For example it'd be cheaper to import a legal, copyrighted manga from Taiwan compared to buying one at Japan. Of course, those items typically have a warning like 'no for resale anywhere else' but of course no one really pays attention to that. I don't think this is the case here, but it is possible to get some pretty cheap and legal stuff simply because the copyright owners have no other choice.
I've known Chinese stores that got busted for selling bootlegged Japanese Anime/games. The reason you don't see this happening very often is due to a few things: 1. These stores actually try to hide the fact they're selling illegal stuff. The bootleg CDs are usually hidden back somewhere with real games/anime on display counter. If you don't know better, most of the Chinese stores selling bootlegged stuff actually looks like a legit operation. This is pretty different from busting a torrent site where you might as well have a sign that says 'come here and download free stuff!' or some pseudo legal stuff that doesn't really make a good attempt to hide the fact that what's being done is illegal. 2. Chinese stores usually only sell to the Chinese. If you're not Chinese chances are pretty good you won't be going to a Chinese store to get anime/games in the first place. In fact there's a good chance the Chinese clerk just won't sell you the bootlegged stuff they stashed behind the counter. Seeing piracy is rampant in China/Taiwan/various Asian countries, it should not surprise you that the average Chinese has even weaker beliefs in copyright compared to the average American. Therefore it is less likely for a Chinese to turn someone over for piracy.
As far as I'm aware there are very few Anime anything that openly supports fansubs. If fansubs is clearly a good idea some Anime makers would've figured this out by now and say they support it. So, at best no one is really sure if fansubs help or not. Since no one knows better, I don't know why it gives the consumer the right to say this is definitely the right way. By the way, fansubs have very high graphical quality now so better quality isn't a good argument to buying the real thing. The difference between Anime and other mainstream stuff is that Anime is still obscure enough that it is hard to tell when you get a lost sales. If you pirate a mainstream blockbuster whatever, the owner can be pretty sure that since this is popular you probably would've bought it even if you claim you would not, and count that as a lost sale due to piracy. On the other hand it is much harder to say this for Anime, especially obscure Anime. This doesn't mean it's right, of course, but the copyright owner is less likely to go after you when it's not clear they're losing money (or any amount that is meaningful to pursue).
The graph doesn't show any unusual drops that can't be explained by the presence of WoW. Unless you're one of those PR guys in SOE that believes there's no such thing as a negative effect from competition (this is different from the fact that the MMORPG is not a zero-sum game), clearly the numbers for your subscription has to go down over time after it peaks because your game is increasingly obselete compared to newer ones, as well as increasing competition. At some point WoW's numbers will start going down too and they'll be losing even more money when it does, but it doesn't mean that heads will roll if WoW's numbers ever stop going up.
Although WoW may indeed be the first MMORPG for most, there's considerable inertia that stops you from leaving a MMORPG and going back to a RTS or FPS or whatever. The persistent aspect of a MMORPG means in order to switch to anything, the alternative has to be better. MMORPG pretty much always beats any other genre if you look at playing time as an investment. If I play WoW for 100 hours I can be sure that no matter how boring/painful that 100 hour is, I'll walk away with considerable benefits at the end to my character for the effort involved. This simply isn't true for other types of games unless one is highly competitive. Therefore to beat a MMORPG, the alternative's gameplay has to be significantly better to make up for that. A title such as Starcraft 2 certainly can make enough people switch back, but there simply isn't a lot of such titles. If WoW is medicore and most games are medicore also, you might as well go with the medicore game that rewards you for playing.