Bottom line is this:
Party games are still games. Who are we to say they are worse than any other genre of game? They are just not most serious/semi-serious gamers cup of tea. They serve a purpose and thousands if not millions of casual gamers love them.
This whole "party games are gooseberry fool" viewpoint is massively childish. So its not your thing, great, move on and ignore.
For related chatter in response to general Wii bashing, check out gamesindustry.biz fantastic article last week called "Third Party Puzzle". Here is a key bit for you:
Viewed dispassionately, it's hard to see the Wii as the scourge which angry gamers claim it to be. It's unlikely to be the only console that an upstream gamer owns - but as a second machine, sitting alongside an Xbox 360 or a PS3, it's absolutely ideal, while for more casual gamers, young families and so on, it's the ideal machine to sit alone under their TV. Hence, presumably, the machine's sales - which remain almost as high as the 360 and PS3 combined, and almost 20 million units higher than the mighty PS2 was at the same point in its lifespan.
So why the anger? On one hand, perhaps a certain sense of technological disappointment persists. Gamers are used to HD, to persistent online services with voice chat and cross-game messaging, and so on - and in those senses, the Wii certainly does not stack up to the PS3 and 360. Nintendo's wisdom lay in recognising that the vast majority of its audience would not notice or care about those things, allowing it to save vast amounts of time and money by leaving them off the console - a decision whose knock-on effects are still felt in the much lower production costs of Wii games.
While this makes sense on a business level, a certain sense of disappointment from the existing fanbase is understandable - but not the harsh treatment Nintendo receives from its most vocal critics. In that case, I fear, a rather more unpleasant line of argument rears its ugly head - the idea that this is the young male demographic who view gaming as their own private playground railing against the sudden inclusion of women, older people and others in "their" pastime.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/t ... -editorial
