DaCostaBR: ludonarrative dissonance
Lol, that's the term. I think some people have to be a special kind of self-important pretentiousness to use a term like that seriously.
my problem is just developers making games according to a checklist of what they think they need to include instead of making the game they want to make.
Well, that checklist exists for a reason, so publishers are sure they are recoup their investment.
but The Walking Dead has proved that an adventure game can sell over 5 million copies,
Worst of both worlds imo, not only does it use a cheap excuse for it's violence (lololol the zombies are already dead so it's okay to bash them to a pulp with a pipe) but it's "non-violent parts" are completely linear, non-interactive, scripted.
so you're proposing instead of fixing the problem of homogenization of AAA games that developers should just live with it.
Games do not need ridiculous Hollywood movie-size budgets to be good games. The problem isn't violence in video games, it's lack of gameplay, player agency, choice.There shouldn't be an AAA, at all, it's bloated and it certainly hasn't brought us any better games, seeing as the best games in history were made in the 90's when the industry and budgets were much lower.
The real division these days is between people who want games with real interactivity, and people who want interactive rendered movies posing as video games.