Also for stories, it's not just games, it's TV, movies, etc. there's a great example from wrestling, the WWE grabbed a bunch of TV writers to write heir stories. None of the stories worked very well, and the TV writers were let go a few months later. Conversely a ew WWE writers have made the jump to write for movies and TV. I do feel though writing for games is an anomaly. If you write for a TV show, you go episode by episode, for games you already know the end point, so in a way you can lack that motivation to do a good job. I do feel though as a whole, game stories are too predictable, Duty Calls, a CoD parody captured this wonderfully in that short parody game when confronting the bad guy, IIR the playthroughs are on Youtube, the whole thing was a send up of the then modern military shooter genre, but it touched on storytelling in games.

I do think though again that storytelling in games is trying too hard to be Hollywood-esque, and that's to the detriment of the game itself. I wasn't involved with a story based game at SMS thankfully, but I've heard stories from other studios of whole mechanics and levels and segments being cut because they weren't fitting with the story, so rather than rewrite the story, the segments got axed and hte poor coders had to redo that bit of the game while the writers got off scot free.

I've said this to friends in the industry and former colleagues, why do games have to shoot for movie type stories? With a movie, you know what you're getting. It's passive. You know the bad guy's gonna get defeated, you walk out, you watched the movie, it's a few hours that gave you enjoyment (hopefully), but with games it is interactive, and I do feel that game devs and especially publishers are pushing for movie like storytelling and forgetting the most important point of a ame...it isn't passive entertainment. it's interactive, you're doing stuff. Much as FMV games were hated 25-30 years ago (Looking at you Dragon's lair), I feel the whole gaming  industry is regressing to that level at a steady rate. Okay you have stuff like Undertale, Into the Breach and FTL but all of those are the exception, not the rule.

Let's take the biggest selling games:

GtA V: Hollywood-esque story about 3 criminals that succeed no matter what the odds and all live happily ever after. Story over, all loose ends wrapped up niely
Minecraft: For the longest time it didn't even have a story...but now it does, you go fight the ender  dragon, get a poem, game over
Even  sports games are getting in on it, and I feel gaming as a whole needs to step back and cut back on the cutscenes, the Hollywood voice actors, the pushing for movie level storytelling, the linearity of games as a whole, I'd much rather see a return to the 80s/90s era of simple stories, fun and addicting and difficult gameplay...

That being said, I can look past a bad story if the gameplay is interesting enough to captivate me.

That's the thing Dark, I've been through the AAA ringer at a big studio and played a lot of videogames though so yes I'm both negative from being burned out by thee industry as a whole, and burned out by the usual crop of games both video and audio though.

I asked a friend of mine who is a published author why she never wanted to write for games, and her response was, paraphrased:

Because writing for games is so limiting compared to books.

I get that, I get it being a writer myself, and having been at a big company....I'm cynical about games and audiogames, I'm cynical because of having to test the same version of a game over and over and over again....week in, week out and get into verbal fights and arguments over game X in the studio.

Now...what, IMO makes a game engaging?

I said game, so....videogame, audiogame, it don't matter...

Personally, I think simplicity really, simple mechanics that are easy to pick up and play but hard to master. Back in the 90s, Papyrus released a bunch of racing sims that got sold in big box stores, your supermarkets, your big chain stores. They were easy to play but hard to master, you could spend hours in it practicing and tweaking your car to get a faster lap time, or trying to win the championship. Some 20 years or so, nearly 25 on, are those games simple? Yes. But they are simple, simple physics, with flaws, but engaging because you have things to do, you're trying to qualify on pole, or learn a new track, or racing a full season to win the title.

Same for RPGs, you go through the main quest, but I'd argue an RPG can be less engaging because of the writing.

So, simple pick up and play mechanics? Check.

Low system requirements:

What I mean by this is I can run it on a low end system, or for audiogames, I can run with Orca or SAPI without any additional software. I can run it on a Pentium III or equivalent for example, I don't need a mega super high end rig with a Titan GTX to run a game.

Next: Addicting gameplay

Do I neeed to explain this one? Again, Puzzle Quest 1 and 2, the match 3 gameplay is addicting because of its simple nature so you get hooked easier.

So what audiogames do I feel tick those boxes?

Warsim has the easy but deep gameplay, I wish it were on Linux but......it has addicting gameplay and  low requirements BUT it's not perfect. AHC has easy gameplay but it is, at least to me, just another RPG. That's not to say it's a bad game, mechanics wise, it's just an accessible RPG, which personally I don't exactly care for frankly.

What else makes a game engaging?

Let's see......

A rich world...but.....this isn't a must, it's nice BUT the gameplay can carry a game if the world isn't super detailed, I feel like some games do go overboard with describing every tiny little thing and it gets too cluttered.

Which leads to my next point:

Only essential sounds:

What I mean by this is you do not need a sound for every tiny little thing happening, at all, it gets overwhelming and turns me off games, personally. The same goes for sounds/ambience, if those are too jarring...nope, uninstall

I'd say though gameplay is more important than immersion though, if you have a really immersive game but poor gameplay you'll notice that quicker, I feel, whereas great gameplay can carry a title on its own regardlesss of how good or bad immersion is. Again, the Puzzle Quest game series, it has generic story, but the gameplay carries it because it adds new twists every so often.

I'd also say immersion is subjective, I had this discussion earlier actually about yes, you need detail BUT you don't want to go overboard with detail and describe, say, every single blade of grass in a field, or for audiogames have every tiny thing make noise. I feel it's a balancing act for immersion, you have to get it right. Something like....say.....a game where you're walking through a field in Minecraft strikes a nice balance, you got the footsteps, the animals moving around and the subtle background music, it all fits together to immerse you, you know what you're doing walking on grass and dirtt. I'd rather however for games as a whole, not just audiogames hit that balance, they don't need to be 3 hour Hollywood movies with quick time events, I recently watched a playthrough of A Way Out and that encapsulated my point perfectly, it's a big budget game that screams OH LOOK GAME AS MOVIE and you never, ever feel immersed in it because it's constantly showing off with set pieces, and the 'gameplay' is just go here, press button....do thing.

The immersion aspect though is subjective, like I said I prefer subtle immersion honestly, I'd rather have X number of sounds and then them used subtle than have 5000 sounds all rammed  into a game to give info. I'd personally rather have only sounds that need to be there....like for the field example, only the wind blowing, the footsteps and animals wandering around, that's all that's needed, I don't need a fence bleeping at me from halfway across the field, I don't need a cow giving me an audio cue constantly. Less is sometimes more is what I'm saying, or lesss sounds can mean more immersion.