“But anyway, who are the first three waves?”

Here’s the way I tend to think about it:

I. From the Dawn of Time up to and through the Parser Era.

Dreams of using a CPU for storytelling go back a long way, but the first real attempts seem to have involved the adventure game genre. Start with Infocom and work your way up to LucasArts. In the end everyone was leaning on comedy so hard nobody noticed it wasn’t working. Until 3D showed up.

II. The Silliwood/FMV Era.

This is the period when storytellers like myself migrated into the industry – although Lee gets a nod for beating us all – and I think of those years fondly. The attempted synergy with Hollywood was a disaster in every way, but most disappointing to me was the fact that almost everyone misunderstood what went wrong. Lots of finger pointing, lots of ego-driven excuses, and in the end not a whole lot to show for the effort.

III. The Persistent World Era, wherein the dumb CPU is replaced by much smarter human players, who unfortunately turn out to be worthless storytellers when they’re not actually trying to wreck the game for everyone else. A nod to Gordon Walton for always calling a spade a spade and never getting sucked into the hype.

About Okami, the addition of the celestial brush makes it even more interesting. I’m very curious about its verbs.
Also, I’m still convinced that the long-term transformation of virtual worlds is one of the great untapped design ideas.

By my count this will be at least the fourth wave of people who have it completely wrong. If you want to get rich, now’s the time to ring them up and tell them all about the possibilities.