Because of a conversation with my brother, I'm curious, to you who play video games, what do you look for in a video game? My brother makes a game for fun and says that his weakest parts, storytelling and map design, are what everybody looks for in a game. I would think good gameplay is what you should look for in a game. So, what do you look for in a game?
I may or may not be your target audience for this question... but I'll take a swing.
I play mostly strategy games. The last ground FPS I played was GoldenEye on N64... so nearly 20 years ago. I do enjoy space FPS; Freespace 2 is still one of my favorites, and I'm still salivating over Star Citizen. But most of my game play is either Grand Strategy (4X), RTS (this includes TD games), and Puzzle... which is a very broad category that includes Roguelikes, Engineering games (Spacechem), Portal, and even KOL, which is a social optimization game.
The main feature that connects these is gameplay, which necessarily includes level design. But nethack, KOL, Spacechem, and Civ 5 almost entirely ignore aesthetics and story in favor of gameplay, complexity, and in the case of KOL silly puns and pop culture references.
Similarly, I don't give a damn about the art in Dominion, Hearthstone, MTG, or any other physical game, as long as the art doesn't interfere with gameplay.
