I half-agree and half-don't. I can see where you're coming from, but I think you're reaching that conclusion by looking mainly at giant corporate software factories like Electronic Arts, who have indeed had a formula of "get marketing to write a spec sheet and then beat the programmers savagely until it's ready for a Christmas release, never mind the quality" pretty much since the Madden series became their bread and butter. There still is innovation and creativity in the gaming world, but it's more concentrated in areas where making a game requires less money and therefore involves less financial risk, so publishers, game companies, and individual creators aren't so afraid to try interesting things.
Portal, for example, started as a concept demo by a newbie team of developers and was upgraded into a small project Valve bundled with a couple of cost-reduced re-releases. A lot of people bought
The Orange Box for
Half-Life II and
Team Fortress II, but
everybody remembers it for
Portal, which was unique, a hell of a lot of fun, and probably
the best example of in-game storytelling yet produced.
To get even smaller and cheaper,
La-Mulana was made entirely by three Japanese guys in their spare time as a love-letter to the MSX home computer and released as freeware. Yet it's not only a solid Metroidvania-style platformer, it also incorporates an interesting story into the gameplay
Portal-style, by dropping hints and bits of narrative in among all the stuff you have to explore and building puzzles around its themes.
So I'd have to disagree. There is new and interesting stuff out there, you're just (understandably) looking in the wrong place.
(P.S. I wouldn't use
FarmVille as an example of something to aspire to, even when the alternative is EA-style pablum.
FarmVille and the other Zynga titles are big business for the same reason heroin is big business. It's not a game, it's a goddamn Skinner box.)
