I was a bit nostalgic remembering an old star wars game I played on the gamecube called Jedi Outcast, and looking through youtube gameplay vids I eventually found this and was surprised to not found that game on the list, only to find out that it was actually the number one game.

Jedi outcast was a rather slow paced DM game based off star wars, and it was also made on the q3 engine so it had stuff like strafe jumping. It was quite a shock to see it on the number spot, because despite the game being brilliant, it doesnt seem the kind of mainstream game that you see these days.

So it occurred to me that a DM game with Star wars weapons and characters could have more chance of succeeding than yet another Quake/UT/Painkiller copy. A few problems that I can think of that prevent DM games to take off:

-its not realistic (unfortunetely we will probably never cater to this public since there are games like cs/cod/bf out there)

-the skillgap and learning curve are too big (this can be "easily" solved by having skill tiers/matchmaking ala QL and also by having loads of tutorials in the game itself or atleast on the official site of the game, explaining all the techniques like strafe jumping)

-its too fast (this is mostly a stereotype of DM games being "twitchy" and apart from games like QW, PK and HLDM the pace is perfectly fine)

-its not a team game (now despite DM games being better than other FPS games for 1v1 gameplay, this doesnt mean that team gametypes must suck. This is also a bit of a stereotype, altho the team gametypes could be improved a bit further)

Now Quakelive has kinda covered all of the items above (the idea of QL is good but the execution is poor), but its still not a sucess, so what else could be holding back DM games?
The answer is: a good storyline. So why did games like CS took off? Because you dont need a storyline when you are living it.

Games like Cod (the first few), Moh and some BF ones are based off WW2. Everybody knows how it ends, but its still an epic story to play, not to mention the games are kind of a tribute to the people who have fought in the war.

While games like CS, Cod (the recent ones), some other BF ones and a bunch of other games like Rainbow Six show our current time, with "real" issues in the middle east and such, with realistic weapons and vehicles.

DM games have usually very simple and shallow storylines, and even if the gameplay is amazing, its doesnt draw too much attention. If you remove the story of mmo games like WoW, how many people would play it regardless?

Now star wars has a very good story, known by pratically everyone and is set on a retro futuristic scenario. Raise your hand if you didnt wish you had a lightsaber when you were a kid.
Maybe this wont make a difference and DM games will never be "mainstream", maybe it will, who knows?
Just throwing this idea out there.