To borrow the words of a far more insightful man than myself: "... with music and fun, and if you're not careful, you might learn something before we're done."
"Art" and "Fun" are not mutually exclusive. "Ugly" games can be fun for decades, if they're done right: anyone want to deny that they'd play a few rounds of Pac Man or Donkey Kong if they couldn't get their Halo 3 team together?
IMHO, the entire nature of this discussion is missing the point of what "Art" is about. A true artist presents the perfectly ordinary in new ways, "assaulting" old assumptions about the commonplace. Take that away, and the same old games come back in sequel after sequel, with little to distinguish one from the next... Oh, wait, we have that already.
Another thing I would encourage the forum to think about very carefully is risk. Not the game "Risk", but the concept of doing something different from the past. "Creativity" is part of it, but I'm talking about bringing a concept with no real competitors on the market upon release. Some people react to this with disgust: "The company wasted all that time and talent when they could have released Yet Another Sequel to my favorite game? Bah!" Some will react with uncertainty: "I can't understand what I'm supposed to do in this game." And others will have their own reactions: "This element enhances gameplay for me, the learning curve for that element is too steep" or "It doesn't have multiplayer options!" or "Cloud cukoo land!"
*cough* Sorry about that last one. Anyway...
It all boils down to this: If you
ever expect genuinely new and improved games (or movies, or television shows, or anything and everything else) to hit the market, you've
got to not only accept, intellectually, that game companies will have to experiment (and fail), but you
must show at least some support for games that make the effort to expand what games can do and be. The cure for 'sequelitis' is not for the public to ask for something different; the cure is for the public to
buy something different when it's available. Yes, there's a good chance that the new thing will not entertain you to the degree you might have liked; Sturgeon's Law is applicable to games as well as sci-fi stories. But there's also the chance that the new thing will Blow
You
Away
With
AWESOMENESS!!!
And you won't find out about it via the marketing campaign, you'll find out about it from your own experience or recommendations from fellow gamers whom you trust.
Suggestion: in between carving games you don't like into sobbing gobbets with your monomolecular-edged criticism, find the one game that you can't bring yourself to complain about. Write at least one forum post to that effect where the game's developers can read it, AND buy at least one more copy of the game. Who knows, maybe they will make another game you like even more.
