When I was 4 years old, my parents let me see violence in movies, TV shows and video games. Every time there was sex on the screen, I looked away. My parents laughed at me every time I looked away. They thought I was being silly to look away from sex.

Yeah, I didn't want my parents to know I liked what I saw... But it must be funny to see someone look away when there is sex on the screen after seeing that someone watch people getting decapitated, shot, stabbed, set on fire like it's nothing etc.

I agree with this. It is well done in new Shadow Warrior. You need to hold any button and there is even bar who fills when you hold it and if you realease it before it fills, the cutsecene is not skipped. It depends how it is done. In Spec Ops: The Line the colelctibles tells story and if you miss some of them you miss parts of the story.
All that game is aminly about story as gameplay is weak and you should be immersed into the whole war experience. The collectibles are trying to do the same but in order to get them, you have to turn away when you are supposed to progress and scour the areas for some fairly minor item somewhere instead of pushing forward in battle.

IMO if the *skip* button is not "any" button, but one, specific button, like the ESC, it's ok. Why are you pressing ESC during a cutscene, unless you want to skip it anyways?

On the other hand, the "skip" button should not be cryptic. Let me give you an example:
I was playing a JRPG. It had turn and tactic based fights, wich means that you needed to try a boss 3-4 times at least, until you developed the winning tactic against it. Which is ok.
BUT
One of the bosses had a long-as-shit cutscene before the actual fight. When the cutscene was over the fight started immediately, so no save option after the cutscene.
And yes. I had to watch that f*king thing over and over and over again. I thought I was going nuts. When the boss killed me again, and I reloaded the game, I went to wash my hair, and have a dinner. I came back, and the cutscene was STILL going!!!
I tried every button. I found out that the "pause" button pauses the cutscene, but this was exactly the opposite of what I was trying to do....
Later I found out the magic code: pause AND esc.
What. The. Actual. F*k.

Too much of: scoreboards, social features, cutscenes, voice acting, superficial characters/plots, simple action gameplay, fancy graphics.

Your character can't go around and have sex but your character can
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHvx0l_tVEw <- NSFW :)

Priceless :D

LOL some idiot was thinking about calling the police on that guy... Great way to waste tax money.

I'm 100% sure it was not a seroius comment. Or at least I hope o.o

Grafix over gameplay/atmosphere/personality/charm has been the biggest pest since PS360 era started.

And players who thing graphics is the most important thing in a game :(
One of the reasons my high school bf became ex pretty fast was that he called games like Baldur's Gate and Morrowind "crap", because "the graphics are soo ugly!"
He played anything if it had photorealistic graphics, and completely ignored pretty much everything else =(

Actually, it's been around forever, it may have worsened during the last generation, but graphics over gameplay have always been a video game issue.

Which brings me back to the indie/small studio developed games vs the big studio games and franchises. Since indie devs have way less money, they focus less on superficial things, such as graphic power, and more on gameplay mechanics, art direction, story and fresh ideas.

Lol, what a douchebag.

It really says a lot about someone if he or she thinks Baldur's Gate and Morrowind are crap because of the graphics. It reveals how empty and superficial he or she is.