People are mostly both got baited and are laughing at Nomura. After KH3, he is worth only laughing at.
As for your hypothesis, I'd say you're starting from it for the sake of it, not because of compelling evidence. Story was a major part of gaming as soon as technology allowed for it, and that's 8-bit era and up.
>and I want to research it more and try to pinpoint when we started shifting from gameplay focus to narrative focus in videogames
I'd hypothesize somewhere around 2008-09, when the cultural zeitgeist surrounding consoles, and by extension the lowest common denominator, shifted almost completely from Japanese game design sensibilities to emergening western ones. I say emerging because while the west hasn't shied away from a emphasis in story, you can compare something like the System Shock games to Bioshock and see where western game design sensibilities were already kind of going moving into the late 00s - much more streamlined and linear. Uncharted's also a good early example of this, as well as huge Japanese franchises like Final Fantasy and Zelda eventually buckling with entries like XIII and Skyward Sword. It's all just a hypothesis, though.
You are pulling cosmic amount of stuff out of your ass. Like, all of it. If you had an education in humanities, I suggest you forget all of it. It's poison.
I agree with you on the cultural changes, but I also think a part of it is technological advancement in consoles. I don't necessarily mean "we now have the technology to insert cutscenes and good graphics", I moreso mean "we've hit the peak when it comes to gameplay so now we have to market with story".
I remember reading somewhere that technological advancement and hyper-realistic graphics hinder an art form because creativity fosters under technological limitations, and imitating reality causes that creativity to wilt. I wonder if the same can apply to graphics? This story-first thing can be seen most blatantly in this generation's third-person shooters, the Sony exclusives in particular coming to mind, and what I notice with all of them is that their insistence on realistic gameplay and control means that the way they play is really bland and they kind of all feel like the same. I liked Horizon Zero Dawn, but gameplay-wise it didn't even feel a little bit different from your average open-world game - yet the enemy design and narrative was pretty good. When you insist that your games be set in the "real world" and thus the gameplay must reflect that, you aren't left with much to innovate on gameplay-wise, so the only unique thing your game can have is story.
That's why when you see gameplay-first games nowadays, they're usually different genres like platformers or something like that, and more often than not, the better ones are indie games.
>i wonder if the same can apply to gameplay?
That's what I meant, sorry. Had a brain moment.
>can a music album be carried by its concept?
Yes.
Technological limitations are one thing but I'd also consider refinement of formulas. By the time the 7th gen rolled around devs had been tinkering with 3D game design for what, a little over a decade? And 3D was the last really huge leap for gaming, sure there was stuff like motion controls, touch controls and VR that are innovative but nothing quite on the game changing scale of going from 2D to 3D, all of those are still complimentary changes rather than true paradigm shifts. Because of that, devs probably mastered the art of designing games with the widest appeal and see little reason to break out because deviating from it might result in less money being made. Development and evolution in gameplay mechanics has sort of stagnated and there's probably not a lot of reward to weigh against the risk of bucking trends unless you're lucky like how devs are tripping over themselves over Breath of the Wild, and even that's largely a restructuring and reenvisioning of a lot of existing ideas. I don't think 98% of devs really know where else to evolve gameplay, but I also don't think there's enough incentive for them to try either.
That's not a breastlet. You may have rotted your mind, user. But yeah, kuronami is top tier
>her
There's a small global Pandemic going on.