My Amnesia Review Article!

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Opinion =/= perspective, and I hardly think design non-sequiters are irrelevant as they have held back gaming and game design as a whole and respected medium for all audiences for decades. As for supply and demand, I can go out and read a hundred reviews by gamers and they will all say the same thing and none of it is something that I cannot see myself. The opinions of gamers are a dime a dozen. Gamers are remarkably uniform.

As someone who has done QA testing for games, I can objectively state that gamers have the worst perspective of gaming on the planet - they accept terrible designs just because they've learned how to deal with them through years of experience. They get stuck in a skinner box grind and they keep going for 90 levels without caring if they're actually having fun, as long as they get to hear the "ding" at the end of the leveling bar.

As for informed opinion, I find that informed opinion is important when dealing with facts. It's for politics and science. This is subjective matter. Art and entertainment should stand on it's own feet, not be propped up by "oh, well, I accept this as part of the genre/medium/whatever". Being informed may color your perspective but it does not make your opinions more important. In short, if the song sucks it'll suck whether or not you can appreciate the guitarist's technical skill.

Absolutely not, and I have said no such thing. Anyway, I find your post to be full of sweeping statements with no basis in fact. Can you prove that gamers are more accepting of "flaws" and more uniform than other people? Because it seems to me like most people have uninteresting opinions - I do not see how gamers are any different.

Also, I simply disagree with your insinuations that how informed you are about the history of a certain genre or artform is somehow irrelevant. As I said before: The only way to truly appreciate how good something is is to be familiar with the parameters.

I've played a lot of games and I absolutely despise transparent game mechanics and the bad design that has indeed plagued video games from the beginning. Does that mean I stoically accept them as inevitable and play on waiting for the ding at the end of the level? No, on the contrary actually. I realize in what ways these design choices are flaws because I've played games that do it wrong and games that do it right, so now when a truly great game comes along I can recognize it as great. A novice may enjoy it, but will he notice all of its good qualities?

EDIT: Also, "opinion" and "perspective" overlap in several ways. In this case, I would say they mean essentially the same thing.