I think about my group (ex-group now) being far to videogamey often. Videogamey comes in different flavors, but most are tough and stringy.
Videogameyness comes out in the general expectation of a cool story, dramatic plot events, amazing battles and moral dilemmas without any work or choice of the part of the players. It typically comes about as a result of emulating the style found in RPG videogames (most notably the Final Fantasy series). Calling something videogamey is not a slight against those games, but rather, a categorization of this style.
For videogamey players, this comes out in a set of behavior I describe as "Pushing the A Button". At its base, this comes out where the player walks up to something, and expects it to run automatically. It also shows up in players who view NPCs as either obsticles or plot devices. Finally, there tends to be an expectation on the DM to characterize a character for the players.
With a videogamey DM, this tends to come out in a long, overarching plot with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. The plot is mapped out from day one. There tend to be many big, important, powerful NPCs. Often the NPCs tend to go around with the characters, and tend to be the driving factor in decisions. There are often "cutscenes" where the players have little to no control over what's happening, and this is often when all the important/dramatic stuff happens. Monsters have a tendancy to fight to the death in every encounter, and tend to use limited, if any, tactics. Most dungeons/areas have some sort of stronger "Boss Monster" in charge. The boss monster almost always is waiting in the room just before the goal.
I've been a videogamey DM, DMed for videogamey players, played with videogamey players, and played under videogamey DMs. In every situtation, whenever things got viedogamey, I got bored.
