I'm classing them as toys because in my opinion they are, looking at the new releases here personally nothing grabs me, yes you have stuff like AHC, youhave stuff like Warsim but those are, I feel, exceptions, not the rule, I feel personally like audiogames are slapped together in BGT or whatever engine to get it out there and the community as a whole likes it because it's something new to play....but....strip away the fancy audio, strip away the story for a moment.
I'd much rather put a story aside, and focus on gameplay. I personally love the aforementioned Cities: Skylines because it gives you a gameplay and doesn't hold your hand, but on the other end of the spectrum, I love Puzzle Quest 1 and 2, both story driven games but with the gameplay coming not from clicking around the sreen, ut in the match 3 gameplay being used for battles, doors, treasure et al. Is it a one trick pony? Sure, but it does that trik very, VERY well and it's addictin.
Or, Animal Crossing, I've yet to figure out why that's so addicting but it is....
If an audiogame came out that was addicting and simple and easy to play, cross platform and free, I'd be all over it, as long as it presented a challenge. I'm not saying Dark Souls levels of difficulty, no, I own one of the Dark Souls games and died in the first area simply by not knowing I was gonna get attacked...but I do feel like most of the audiogames that are popular are not...to me, and this is my opinion, a challenge.
Here's the thing. I grew up playing games like...yes the Nintendo games, the Genesis/Megadrive games, the SNES and N64 games, but mostly on PC, If I name a classic 80s/90s PC game I've probably played it and that's what I'm comparing audiogames to from my perspective, compared to...say....Future Pinall, ESP Pinball gets close, yes, but I'll take Future Pinball because FP feels better to me, it feels more like a pinball table should do. I'll take FSX over Eurofly any day. I'll take Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 over AHC for instance.
I simply feel like audiogames, or at least the ones that are atop the new releases room with a few exceptions, don't personally draw me in. I can level the same criticism at games as a whole, I sunk hours into Warcraft and Starcraft, I sunk hours into Civ but I got bored of Tactical Batltes within a few minutes.
That brings me onto a semi-related point though. I feel some audiogames try to do too much with what they have. I'd rather in...let's say a turn based Civ type game, not have 20 hotkeys for everyhing and it announcing everything I move the cursor over, I'd rather just have one key to open a menu and pick from those options if I hit enter on a town or a unit or an empty hex.
IMHO audiogames need to step back and ditch the 500 keys in certain genres, I personally don't want every tiny little thing announced in a strategy game, I'd rather have the mystery of finding out myself there's an enemy city neary by sending a nuit there than having the game magically tell me that it's there, its strength, how many units defending and so forth. That ruins such games for me. In Civ for instance you can see the other enemy city but you don't know what's inside the city till you attack, then the defending pile of units appears. Or if they're cunning, the units are nearby and waiting to attack next turn.
No no I was saying gamers don't make smart decisions either way, and they sure as hell don't learn from their mistakes at all though. It's amazing how many gamers on this generation can't quickly learn a map or a mode and rely on minimaps and such to learn instead of paying attention to their surroundings and then some. Makes for a ton of easy stealth kills in games. I'm the guy in the corner hiding off the radar with traps set. Usually ge t a bunch of interesting reactions from people who die and rage at me for it. If they'd paid attention...
Physics is a tough one though, the thing is physics is subjective and there's a ton of shortcuts in physics in games to make it fun, and on the other end, programming physics is hard and can get people burned out vey, very quicklyM64