I think the state of 3d gaming is not as good as the 2d era was , but I feel we're getting better. Remember the earliest days of gaming? Most of those games sucked, save for a few. I go through my junk and hook up my Coleco, 5% of the myriads of games I find are worth playing. I still have an old Tommy Tutor system, which (it's depressing to say) never released a single good game. I hook up my Atari, and I still have a hard time finding a fun game that isn't already in some Arcade Classics compiation. Commodore 64?
Zack McKracken, Maniac Mansion, Krak Out, and that's about 3 out of 90 games.

What's my point? A few years down the line, games got better. NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, etc. had a lot of good games. The game companies figured out what was fun and what wasn't. And we enjoyed the fruits of their labor.

Then came 3d, and game companies had to start all over again. 3d games are completely different from 2d. Just like in the early 80's, game developers had to figure out how to make 3d games fun. And for a long time, they couldn't figure it out, save for a few games. But 3d games nowadays are a lot better than they used to be. When was the last time you threw your controller at the screen because of an incompitent camera with a recently released game? Many games on systems like Dreamcast and Playstation 2, and some of the newer N64 games are fun and challenging. I think the future will bring forth 3d games with the same, if not more fun as the NES and SNES systems.

But there are some things game developers need to learn before this can happen.

A game is not a ride at Disneyland. Pilotwings 64 is a perfect example. The whole premise of the game was to fly around with nothing to do and go "ooooh.....ahhhhh......lookie.....there's a carousel, oh look! there's mount rushmore!". Sure the game had some gameplay elements, but they could have done much more. Instead they just made a 3d world with pretty graphics. No. This cannot happen. A game is a game so you can play it. Instead of writing on the back of the box, "Immerse yourself into stunning 3d worlds," they need to say, "Immerse yourself into good, solid gameplay," Instead of saying "Get ready for the ride of your life," they need to say, "Get ready for the challenge of your life,"

A game is not a movie. Squaresoft, Nintendo, shame on you. A game is not a Choose Your Own Adventure story. FMV's, deep plots, these cannot interfere with gameplay. The only cartoon worth watching in a game is the ending. Final Fantasy 9 is 4 CD's big. 4 CD's is roughly 2800 megabytes in size. Final Fantasy 3 on the SNES was 3 megabytes, yet took longer to beat. Where did all the memory go? FF3 didn't need FMV's to be a good, solid RPG. One last rule, a video game should never cost 20 million dollars to make. Never.

Never sacrifice frame rate for graphics. Several games have "gorgeous 3d environments," but play like you're sitting in the dark with a strobe light on. Even powerful systems like Dreamcast and Playstation 2 are guilty of this. Armored Core 2 on PS2 has fast furious gameplay until someone fires a couple ultra detailed, super hi-res rockets.

In short, whether we like it or not, 3d gaming is here to stay. Once game systems are powerful enough, programmers won't have to worry about their gaming ideas not being powerful enough to go on a console, and gaming will enter a golden age. Just imagine if Shigeru Miyamoto could actually create the Mario or Zelda game that was in his head, without worrying without hardware constraints.