Games are creativity.
Games are ideas formed from your own mind that becomes interactivity for you and the consumer playing said games.
Games are passionate unified interest between you and anyone else that share your passionate interest.
Games are art.
Games are music~
Games are fun. FUN!!
Games goes WAY beyond business. With the right team and creative mind, you can see that the term "Video Games" offers so much more for developers and for the fanbase.
Let's take Cave as example here. Cave are mainly an arcade bullet-hell shooter company (they made games like
ESPgaluda,
DoDonPachi,
Mushihimesama,
Deathsmiles,
Guwange, and so on) but they also make all kinds of other type of games with unexpected twists, like
Nin2-Jump on XBLA. It's simple side-scrolling arcade action, where you pick up items to later reach the goal in a level. It's a simple concept that still works. The thing with Cave in general, is that they actually listen to their fanbase, and for them, it's OK if the games don't sell so much, but here in lies the reason why Cave games actually sells, even at the steep price they offer for both the arcade cabinets and their games on the 360. Not only do they have people that worked for decades and has still stayed in the company to develop, illustrate (drawings) and compose (music) new materials for their products, their games are set at a difficulty range that balance their income, specially in the arcades.
The drawings and artwork for their characters, backgrounds and overall appearance for their games are beautiful and also adorable~ But it also feels familiar. These games have characters and personalities you feel related to in some shape or form. Not to mention that the music made by Manabu Namiki and Yousuke Yasui all have this kind of unexpected love and effort put into them, with a specific sound font you don't normally hear in todays media anymore. It's mostly classic style game music, using Yamaha sound chips, to create melodies that actually gets stuck in your mind and that are catchy. And Yasui himself intentionally composes his music to sound like Mega Drive or 90s Arcade style music, and that in itself is a unique thing to hear and enjoy. If you want more examples on what their team at Supersweep composed, listen to the
Mega Man Network Transmission (Capcom) and
Battle Garegga (Raizing/8ing) soundtrack, and thank me later~
I can also mention Vanillaware and George Kamitani for their effort of creating visually appealing artwork, characters and animations that makes your eyes glimmer with love and excitement. Their latest game will be
Dragon's Crown, but they have also made games like
Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara (for Capcom),
Princess Crown,
Grim Grimoire,
Odin Sphere,
Muramasa: The Demon Blade and a few other beautiful games, so you can see why these games are still fun to play and appeal to a fanbase that enjoys these types of games.
Even in the early 90s, WayForward has a lot of spriters and composers on their team to create unique experiences that you don't see much of anymore, and their characters are mostly cute-looking but also has sex appeal, but not in a borderline way. Awesome games they have made lately is
Shantae,
Sigma Star Saga,
Contra 4,
Mighty Flip Champs and
Mighty Milky Way, and there will be more later on, like
Mighty Switch Force on 3DS. Not to mention that a personal friend of mine (James Montagna) is on their team designing and structuring the maps for their games, like in
Shantae: Risky's Revenge, and the maps makes you explore so much of each area and use your skills and items to unlock new path, and that's a inspiring and addicting way to lengthen the game's replay value and the game's overall length. Kinda like the 2D Metroid and Castlevania games. And Jake "Virt" Kaufman's music is so over-the-top and exciting too, they are in a style that takes you back to the classic days of video games, but adds new elements into the mix too, and his compositions are unique too. Look into his stuff at
Big Lion Music.
I could go on like this, but there actually are fun games that don't really focus on business and still wins the hearts of their fanbase and are unique original ideas with twists and memorable lovable characters in them as well. Like Capcom's
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on DS, Marvelous Entertainment's
Half-Minute Hero on PSP&XBLA, GameFreak's
DrillDozer on GBA, CyberConnect2's
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter on DS, DreamRift's
Monster Tale on DS, Mistwalker's
The Last Story on Wii, MonolithSoft's
Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii, Ganbarion's
Pandora's Tower on Wii, G.rev's
Mamoru-kun wa Norowarete Shimatta!, Konami's
Otomedius &
Parodius &
Gradius series, Capcom's
Power Stone games, Psikyo's
Gunbird games and countless others. I will stop here but I hope you get the idea about how games are fun interactive experiences for both developers and the fanbase, and their existence will be remembered by all the passionate gamers for years, decades and millenniums to come.