I'm with you on angry birds, but then I feel like I just don't "get" that game. Casual games feel like a total time sink to me and while I feel angry birds certainly got something right, it just hasn't reeled me in at all. Some casual games do suck me in, bit by bit, until I snap, utter "what am I doing with my life?!" and quit them.
Somehow, I'm OK with pissing away 40+ hours on large RPGs. Hmm... but that brings me to my second point: Oblivion. What the feck? I thought Morrowind was neat after the insanely boring Daggerfall, but Oblivion took a step back in presenting us with one of the most banal RPG worlds yet. Sure, it looked great at first, but that was before you spent some time exploring and realised that the combat was poor, the countryside boring, and not a single interesting character in sight. It's not that the game was that bad, but I just could not understand where all the acclaim came from!
It's kinda like CoD too... CoD1 was a wonderful game after Medal of honour went down the toilet, and CoD4 was a gem because of the level of polish and refined gameplay. But MW2 and 3 have brought nothing new to the table. Meh!
...ok so that's my rant.
Not everyone is the same (which is good), you just aren't part of those game's audience. Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean other people don't. Now that doesn't mean you're in the wrong - in fact I tend to stay away from mainstream, high-audience games like Angry Birds of CoD or etc.. because of how obvious those games are. There's no depth, nothing - just point and shoot, point and shoot, point and shoot, die, spawn, point and shoot all the way.
Also, it's been proven time and again that when good game companies which bring something new to the table are overrun by the unwashed masses because their first game was a hit, they immediately become lazy and unoriginal because of the sheer amount of money pouring in - so they just iterate the same game (often dumbing it down every time because, you know, people might quit if it's too hard) every six months because they can get away with it, milking the masses away as much they can. Then people eventually get bored of the same stuff, company attempts a move but "too little, too late" and dies off. History repeats itself. It's happened with CoD, it's happened with Battlefield, it's happened with TES, it's happened with many MMORPG's (WoW is the most obvious of all, and then you have all the copycats), it's happened with Minecraft. Valve seems to be one of the few game companies that still has some integrity but I suspect this shall change in due time.
This is, as Hodgman shows, done because molding the public to fit the game is cheaper than molding the game to fit the public. People (in general) are incredibly easy to manipulate and are (usually) quite dumb and uneducated. Have a walk around your neighbourhood one day, just knocking to doors and saying hello. It says a lot. So the obvious "profitable" method for game companies is to churn out crap and (somehow) convince people to buy it than to sell good games to a public that is now too brainwashed to appreciate anything more complicated than "point and shoot".
Also check out our "society": go on your favorite game's forums and try and raise an issue or suggest an improvement or show something is not working (you know, what forums are for) and you will get flamed, marked as troll, made fun of, mocked, shot down, censured, threatened and/or banned. If you're not part of the hivemind, which has apparently decided that forums should, in fact, only be used for praise and trolling, then your opinion doesn't even count. The most common advice they will give you is either "don't like it don't use it" or "make your own game". Nothing more to say there, then.
There you have it. It all comes down to human nature, capitalism, effort/reward and peer pressure. Almost everybody you walk past in the streets would gladly knife you in the back if it was legal and there was profit in it for them - think about that. It's only natural they'd want to rip you off by selling you the same thing you've already played, just rebranded and marketed as something different when in fact it's the same product. I suspect there's game sequels out there that are actually *exactly* the same game, just with different models and textures. And people would still buy it.
Life sucks, but it still beats the alternative.
Just avoid these kind of high-audience games, try and find low-population games (which is where you usually find nice people who enjoy a good laugh), or just create a LAN with your like-minded friends. You'll also get less hackers (if any) and in general you'll be far happier than trying to stick with the mainstream. Stay away from all that crap and play the games you like. It doesn't take an AAA game with multimillion budgets for you to have fun, seriously. In 1985 people were playing text games and having a blast, and today many people still practice pen and paper roleplaying games. Perhaps you're just looking in the wrong places for good games for you.
/rant
