| I've never heard of Vagrant Story, but whatever.
People know those games are "fun little time-wasters," but they still like them. Really, I'd say that the majority of games are fun time-wasters-- that's their nature. But something like Skies of Arcadia might be an fun, epic time-waster, whereas WarioWare is a fun little time-waster. It's just a matter of scale.
How much brain power and creativity? More than you'd think. Maybe the premises themselves aren't complicated, but they aren't not something that you'd just sit down and think of right away. Once they'd gotten the idea for WarioWare, then churning out microgames probably wasn't that hard. But first they had to say, "What if we make a game whose gameplay is based entirely around 200 5-second 'microgames?' " That takes a lot of creativity. And then after they got the idea, they had to execute the idea in such a way that people have a good time playing it. The idea behind Katamari Damacy isn't complicated, but it is in fact very creative, and it makes a good game.
It probably took much less creativity, in fact, to come up with Super Smash Bros., for instance, than it did to come up with either WarioWare or Katamari. "Let's throw all the famous Nintendo mascots into an arena and have them fight" isn't very creative at all, if you think about it-- although, of course, the actual fighting system and style were.
Well, yeah, games should try to be good. Otherwise there's no point and people won't buy them. But I think "good" is broad enough that it includes games from both ends of the spectrum, from Morrowind (or FF6, I suppose, if you prefer) to Katamari Damacy. |