Ignoring it just based on the very first part. Iron sights are perfect. They allow for better aiming and give you a sense of immersion, as well as realism in most games. Saying that they are bad or overdone is just stupid.

EDIT: For clarification, gamers WANTED iron sights for a long time, and when it became common place, there wasn't a complaint. Now they are somehow suggesting to revert back to the old days without them? He's advocating his own complaint about stepping backwards.

The linked article is really bad. Many things like DRM and payment options are either known or like creative bankrupty and gaming concepts greatly exagerated. Nothing of substance here, no hard facts, just opinions.

Gaming will develop further. Creativity is still there somewhere and will continue to be there. Computer games also will not getting much more expensive, if customers don't pay for it. And the online account binding - well that's really ugly, but it's the same like Facebook isn't it. The dark side of the internet era. But there are still single player games without authentification out there, and they will hopefully still be there for those who want them.

Yeah, perfect for the CoD or Battlefield game.
What we need is some new Serious Sam-type of game: we don't really have many of those anymore, while in the 90's they abounded. Now we walk sluggish, we have ironsights and regenerable health.
Duke Nukem Forver has shows us what modern games have become. Duke 3D it's 20X times better than Duke Nukem Forever, and that's because it's fast, fun and balanced at the same time.
Developers don't want us to take risks anymore and they spoon-feed us, telling us that those new regenerating health systems and ironsights are major improvements over old arcade FPS mechanics. Who says that? It's just a different design, it is not necessarily better than the old mechanics.

Wong's right when he says that we are being constantly casually-fied.

It's a changing industry. As AAA games cost more to develop, more publishers will want safe games like CoD that a lot of people will want to buy. But is that all there is?
In this it's like the movie industry, there's a lot of big budget crap, but there's also a lot of good movies. Just don't use the television as your only information supplier and you'll discover there are loads of fantastic movies being made. There's a lot of crap too, but you'll recognize that fast enough if you've watched enough so you can avoid it.

It used to be so that a sequel to a movie has a chance of 0,278564% to be at least at good as the original while game sequels were mostly better than the original. In this the game industry is like the movie industry as well nowadays. Sequels are becoming worse and worse.

Or any other game that tries to be "realistic" (whatever that means in games). Shooting from the hip is generally a bad idea, unless you can carry a whole armory's worth of gear and still double jump, then you can do anything you want.

I really want my games to have a numerical health indicator on the HUD. That isn't even enough for me, actually, I want it to be in integers, and I want the health to be such that it doesn't regenerate except in special cases like if you're touching a secret rainbow or step on a medkit. This bloody screen effect thing they have going on nowadays just isn't fun at all.

Or you can have a trillion health potions that you have to manually ingest and never run out of, but PLEASE, no health system that actually manages to sidestep all of this pointless tediousness ;).

Actually - the revelation came to me back in the day when "Clive Barker's: Jericho" 's mechanics were discussed, specifically the outrage of not having a jump button. If I were to summarize the controversy, it would go like this:
"You can press the 'use' key to jump across small obstacles. Is there any reason why you'd REALLY WANT to jump around the levels like an idiot ?"
"Because THAT'S WHAT I'M USED TO ;_; !"

Oh, and there's also the anti-cutscene, anti-Quick_Time_Events front of people who can't get through their skulls that it's not "dumbing down" and "ZOMG press X not to die" but the physical impossibility of integrating some maneuvers into the standard control scheme. That's why we have the f***ing "interact" button that takes care of a lot of actions that may be as trivial as pushing a button, opening a door or flipping a switch, but would be a nightmare to break down into simpler motions that can be executed with WSAD and friends. I swear, people who whine about this should be forced to play QWOP...

The future.

You know it's coming. :P

On topic:
The article makes some good points, I don't know if I quite agree with the conclusion though. But it was a overall fine, interesting and rather disturbing read which reflects some of my thoughts. Thanks for the link. :)

Hehe, I'm usually the guy who wants to jump around like an idiot :)

But, I have an explanation for my side of the argument: I like having choice. I really feel that we should be able to decide when to 'jump', just because we can decide the same in real life. Though, it's not a matter of making the game the same as real life; it's more a matter of being able to feel free.

By having that "jump over obstacle when pressing the USE key" I feel restricted. I want the possibility to jump on everything, even if there isn't an obstacle in my way.
I think games should give you a larger margin of freedom, because too much is on-the-rails nowadays.

I'm actually reasonably optimistic for the future of PC gaming. The development of digital distribution, along with easily available engines for not much money, means that small teams of developers can easily produce and distribute a game with reasonable graphics, a good story, and great gameplay. Power has been taken away from the big Publishing houses, and given back to the developers. Develop games that people want, and they will pay for them.

Of course, this is really bad news for the massive publishers, who are up-in-arms about development costs etc. But for the kind of games that most people play and want, you can get for a few dollars, either from Steam or from the developer's website. I understand some people's anxieties about Steam, but it's been great for the industry as a whole as it has allowed small independent developers to sell their great games to a mass market.

As one of the comments on the board there said, these are trends in AAA gaming, not the industry as a whole. Do people want Battlefield 2145564? Clearly many people do, but an Independent developer could produce a FPS game that's almost as good for a fraction of the cost, and most people would be happy with it.

Basically what I want is that there's some sort of a consequence if I keep screwing up in fights. I much rather explore every nook and cranny for a health pack than pop out of cover and shoot at guys until the screen is pretty red, then go back into cover until the screen is no longer that red, repeat, over and over and over again. I like the integer health indicators because then I can easily assess whether I'm screwed or not, health bars are okay too. I'm not trying to be too picky here, but it really detracts from my gaming enjoyment. I just don't like the omni-regeneration of health or the red gooey screen. (actually I don't like too much of this realism thing in my games anyway)

Maybe my preferences are like that just because that's what I'm used to (though by now I'm rather used to regenerating health), it's quite possible, but I believe there's nothing wrong or similar to outrage with my wanting to have integer health indicators in games :)
(I just went and assumed you meant that bit as an reply to me)

I'm only against Wii quick time events. I don't want to wiggle/shake and twist the controller, even if there's an alien with sharp outwards teeth trying to kiss me. Cutscenes are okay as long as they're well integrated into the game (so they don't interrupt anything important without a really good reason or not-make-any-sense).

If David Wong had been alive in the 50s with all the science fiction movies, he would have declared movies DEAD FOREVER. If he had been alive in the 60s with all the cowboy movies, he would have declared movies DEAD FOREVER, and would have cited John Wayne remaking the same movie three times (Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo, El Dorado; yes, I've seen them all).

The thing is - this serves no purpose within the game; "this is not a jumping game" to quote the official response. As soon as you drop the idea "the game has first person perspective, therefore I should be able to jump"... there is no justification for WHY you would exactly want THIS mechanic present and not something different - like rolling, standing on one leg or scratching your forehead. Similarly - you can fill an adventure game with items that can never be used for anything. Or add runewords to Diablo 3.
The key question is - WHY ?
It's cool to have options but there is a difference between freedom and catering to predefined ideas on what should be where. If something has no place in the general design of a game - it SHOULD NOT be there. So the creative process behind a game should never start with "OK, so we have WSAD, jumping, crouching and two firing modes. What kind of a game do we want to build around it ?". The idea should come first, with the interface tailored to match.

Yeah... I was pretty sure you were making fun of people wanting ridiculous, contrived and unrealistic systems just because that's what they were used to 0_o. I guess you were serious after all...

the biggest horror of this is that people/gamers havent found a way to punish those who create those horrors like in: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-most-ominous-trends-in-video-games/

Exactly - the only people the direction of current PC gaming who should be worried are the big publishers - us gamers will be happy with the great games available cheaper from the indie developers :)