The problem with video games is as follows: the medium is in its adolescence. Combined with a mass media culture, this results in the same thing as, say, entering puberty does for kids.
Suddenly, you will do anything to get noticed, and by "do anything" we mean "whatever the cool kids are doing" and by "get noticed" we mean "stand out just enough that someone cute will ask you out or won't say no when you ask them to go a movie with you".
The actual cool kids, meanwhile, are just copying off their older siblings, who are more likely than not cribbing off what they read in the style magazines they say they don't read.
...while the real actual cool kids, the ones who will actually do something with their life and will not stop being cool the second they graduate high school, have somehow managed to squelch the little adolescent voice screaming in the back of their head enough to do what they wanna do (while also trying to meet their parents' expectations) and be good at it.
When he was twelve, Michael Jordan was just the kid who was really good at basketball. If you believe their talk-show anecdotes, every model and hot actress was "the weird gawky girl" in school. Justin Bieber--okay, bad example, but you get the point.
So of course video games are an incestuous pool of copycats and me-toos and the-same-but-differenters. We're in junior high right now. Maybe high school. And I don't know about you, but in high school I was repugnant with a few redeeming features.
