Many of you are too young (as in, you've just hit puberty) to recall games like Arcanum of Steamworks and Magic, Fallout and Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2 Shadows of Amn, and Planescape Torment. Despite their often times well written and deeply interactive stories, the gamer and thus the market has gone in a dumber and more intellectually lazy direction.
Enter the era of dumbed down gaming. Most gamers will be perfectly content with the contrived and mediocre, and most giants of the industry have noticed this. Who needs a meaningful and interactive storyline when you have a pet dog and a big sword? Who needs a solid plot and a decent ending when you have explosions and super mutants? Why have a deep and innovative game when you can have a dumbed down collection of colorful Mini-Games? Kudos to anyone who knows the games I'm speaking of.
Maybe this follows a trend in evolution. Statistically people with an IQ level between 90-100 are more likely to have children and are likely to have more children that people with an IQ level of 110 or above. Given the heritability of intelligence, games and movies aren't just dumbing down, all of society is dumbing down. Society has become more enlightened, but it hasn't become more intelligent. We don't really have to worry about Idiocracy becoming a reality because 90 seems to be where IQ levels bottom out before becoming a hindrance on social function, but we face the real possibility of humanity becoming every bit as dumbed down as our entertainment media has become.
