fortified_concept said:
When companies are making copycat games it doesn't mean you're creative, most of the time it means you made a ton of cash and they want a piece of the action. I still haven't met someone btw that can sufficiently explain to me what's creative or genius in a game as simple as Wii Sports or any casual games.
They copy an idea that wasn't there before, a result of some kind of creativity. And creativity is not exactly easy to explain, it takes a while for people to be able to do that, for practically everything.
They might be fun for awhile, yes, because you can play them even with a monkey and they're simple as hell which means you don't usually have to use your brain which makes it even easier to pick up and play, but making an art of the lowest common denominator to attract more idiots (to avoid a strawman I'll say it now that I'm not implying everyone who plays these games is an idiot) and make more cash doesn't equal creativity.
You're being really offensive, you know. If you don't think "everyone" who plays them is an idiot, why are you even using the word? Maybe because you think the majority of them are? (How many?) This is not a strawman btw, it doesn't become one because you call it so, you're actually - despite saying you aren't - claiming that people playing the Wii are (mostly) idiots. If you think people who play these games are dumb and so on, you should say that, and that's quite obviously the claim your whole argument is resting upon: that Wii games are for "simpler" people. You don't even make any other argument, you're only talking about the inferiority of people playing Wii games. If this is not a strawman, you could probably explain your argument without demeaning people who like these games, no?
Anyway, what you're saying is not very insightful: older people play the Wii because they're older and thus often "mature" - and not in the "likes and is allowed to watch porn and horror" sense that a lot of people confuse with maturity - and the silly stuff that interests teenagers is behind them, they just want the pure mechanical and gameplay fun of these games. Remember that feeling from Pong or Horace goes Skiing or an early Breakout clone? That's why they're creative and successful - the layers of the specialist "gaming" culture are mostly stripped from the games, and what remains is a purer form of gameplay. Wii Sports is not as sophisticated in terms of gameplay as proper fighting games etc, but it's certainly not primitive (and Resort is quite a bit better).
People play these games because they don't require useless and elitist "gaming culture" knowledge to get into, and that's a part of their creativity. They don't have dumb adolescent-oriented stories, they're mostly neutral and inoffensive (although this is true for almost all Nintendo games). They don't require a complicated controller with a lot of conventions that take a long time to learn. You can play them together with other people, not online but in the same room, and have some physical fun in a relatively small space. Simplicity doesn't really mean they're not creative, just the opposite.
If that were the case Michael Bay would be the most creative director.
Michael Bay could never create something like Wii Sports. He'd be way closer to Gears or maybe Uncharted at best. Those are the real lowest common denominator games, the Modern Warfares and Dante's Infernos, not Wii Sports.
Simply said, you seem to be mistaking simplicity for lack of creativity, and that's a pretty big mistake.