pierrot wrote:And then 30 years from now when games come full circle and become what Hollywood is now, we'll at least have a golden age to look back on wistfully.
Too late.
I sadly agree with this.
Cracked's article is correct in the idea that Video Games have the tools to be better than any other form of art and media.
When they talk about the various set pieces that you can look at and question how it is related to the story, you have to have a development team that is willing to put something there for you to see.
A lot of games simply put things in their games that look cool and are essentially the Zack Snyder of videogames, with a lot of flash and elements that mesh incredibly well together, but serve no purpose but to look cool. Other games, like Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, Majora's Mask, and the Myst franchise, litter their games with so much to look at and ponder, because their placement has purpose, albeit completely unrelated to the task at hand, that mystery does still indeed exist.
That is what separates the good games from the great games (artistically speaking, not mechanically), the small details.