As gamers we have grown fat on the visual banquet in our games and it's all too easy to salivate over the graphics in Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 or the power of Epic's Unreal Engine. But as we approach photo-realism, the importance of visual technology must surely be peaking. It is hard to imagine just how much better graphics can get, short of projecting a character into your living room.
Now developers are searching for something more substantial to feed gamers by offering more fulfilling games that try to captivate players in the way the film industry has been doing with audiences for decades.
"We can learn a lot from other entertainment media," claims Charles Cecil, the boss of York-based Revolution Studios. It's one of the few game studios that has managed to ride the years of all-too-similar first person shooters and keep the spirit of adventure alive with its world famous Broken Sword series.
At the recent Edinburgh International Games Festival, Cecil explained that, although the games industry has mastered conveying fear and excitement to players and providing adrenalin rushes and frustration, when it comes to portraying more complex emotions and character depth, it is sadly lagging.
"There's a lot we can do, from simple facial and body animations that can stir the senses and make characters more emotive. But our objective isn't necessarily to make our characters - human or otherwise - more realistic, but instead to make them more believable, and it's something the movie industry has managed to do extremely well from the days of Steamboat Willie."
But giving games a creative brush-up is not just about keeping up with the movies. Giving players a deeper experience in their games makes financial sense too, explains David Freeman, the founder of the Freeman Group, a design/writing team, and the author of Creating Emotion in Games.
"If you want your game to reach a mass market, be competitive and garner great press and player buzz, then it must be emotionally gripping," he explains. "By making games seem like a relevant investment of entertainment time for those who have previously shunned them, we help expand the player demographic, create brand loyalty and gain the competitive advantage. All of which is worth a fortune!"
Like Cecil, Freedman - who invented the term "emotioneering" to describe the process of emotionally enriching games - believes creating good games is not simply a case of writing better dialogue, although that plays an important part.
"The non-linearity and unique structure of many games means that it's ... about creating a fully interactive experience through a combination of design, plot, dialogue and visuals that immerses players in an experience and world."
Arguably, fostering a more intelligent and imaginative approach to games wouldn't go amiss in these mud-slinging times. Although the games industry is financially booming, it is still relatively immature in scope and breadth of vision compared with other entertainment forms. Yet games have the unique ability to transport people to virtual worlds and not only take them on wild adventures, but make them an intrinsic part of them - whether they're a rock star or a New York cop on the edge.
If the games industry is to build on its potential and add to the wonderful graphics it already produces, then creating more emotionally gripping games will be an important step in capturing new audiences.
