I think that John, like me, tried doing ALL the side-missions...you know the ones where you have to kill special monsters. It added 40 hours of gameplay for me at least and I didnt even finish all of them.
Overall I like the design, however I have to agree on the sharp contrast the background gives. I can feel my eyes straining almost immediately. Also, I would like to see a cellphone-friendly version of the site.
Like others have mentioned, this talk seems entierly self-serving. He's recruiting developers for his site. Besides the Bioshocks and Fallouts, there's also a huge casual market with single-player gamers and a big share of that is Flash even.
The advantage of the sandbox is that you can get a different experience each time. If it's scripted, you would eventually tire of the same thing over and over. It's just not realistic to create new scripted experiences constantly in an MMO and therefore relying on the player to create ...
A game that comes to my mind is Indigo Prophecy Fahrenheit in america . Even though it does have it's moments of timing button pressing, the fact that it has a meter that keeps track of your stress level and the way that it is affected says a lot.
