Just finished playing Dear Esther

[Bridge]

I loved it, enjoyed it plenty, wasn't looking for a gameplay experience from it because that's not really what it is.

If you didn't want to pay money for it you coudl've just gotten the HL2 mod verision and played that instead.

2)It's not that I didn't want to pay money, it's that what I got was not enough for such a high price. And it's not a quantity over quality thing; I just didn't feel the story was interesting or developed enough (because let's face it, who can develop a story and pace it correctly in ~20 minutes?). I don't want to accuse the devs of being lazy (I have no right) but it's just too minimalistic, and not in a good way. Subtlety is one thing, but not telling the story to your audience is quite another. Had it been a complete audiobook, with the narration being nearly constant and the story properly presented, I probably would have liked it a lot more.

1) Okay, this is just ridiculous. Not looking for a gameplay experience? It's an FPS with mouselook, movement controls and a fully rendered and (mostly) traversable 3D environment. Why even tease the player if you didn't want him to be able to do anything? Just have the game engine render an on-rails video presentation (like in the UT '98 intro) and narrate over it. Upload it to youtube or sell it, whatever you want, this did not need to be a game (because there's no interactivity).