Lert me ask you this: Before greenpeace, their methods aside, mentioned all the things you listed above, have you ever once thought about them? Have you considered that plasma TVs could be bad for the environment?
Greenpeace won't solve any of these problems. Consumers will. However, only if they are aware of them. That is what NGOs do - and that's why they do it so radically - because otherwise, who would listen? Greenpeace doesn't control anything, yes, you're supposed to do things - but since when exactly is something like that mandatory?
I'm not a big fan of the methods greenpeace uses, but people like you clearly demonstrate, that otherwise no one would care.

It's not that easy.
Adressing a problem on a global stage needs awareness of the consumers; Just read through the comments here, there are a lot of people who either don't care or don't even want to know about environmental effects. These are the mainstream consumers of (especially) the entertainment industry.
You won't reach this people with hypothetical scenarios because they simply don't care. Just look at some of the comments to this article:

"just go home greenpeace and and list a new name with some truth in it, like busy bodie, or think i know it all, or doo doo gooder, something that fits. get a life, no one gives a chit or will remember you."

With a generic position like this, who would care about the extinction of honeybees?

It's really a communication problem: People take these messages personal. They believe, that this is an accusation rather than the awareness for responsibility. One can't really blame them because it is formulated as one which is the whole problem behind this confrontation.

What toadwarrior mentioned
"we hear this shit about once a month if not more. Where was Greenpeace when Nintendo wasn't the most popular kid on the block?"

Of course they're around, would anyone have noticed them if Nintendo weren't popular? This is how NGOs work and, sadly, have to. Why? Because of people like the above mentioned. While I'm not a fan of these techniques, because of them Greenpeace has somewhat of an impact it wouldn't have otherwise.

I'm generally a huge fan of customisation, especially games that allow players to interfere in gameplay rather than appearances.

What we shouldn't forget when approaching this topic is the mechanic nature of a videogame itself. The Media works because it achieves to create a unique way of expieriencing a situation (because of interactivity, the possibility of simplification of a problem, etc.).

If a story works within this context, a game can take more than a hundred hours but it needs to apply to different qualities when it does (Much more those of a movie rather than those of a game). Games of this kind have to create a dense atmosphere, they have to move players to create affection - hardly anyone would praise MGS4 because of it's shooting mechanics.

However, the shorter the game, the more compelling the mechanics (I'm not too fond of the word "gameplay") have to be to actually make a game work; it's not different from a board game. Perhaps those games still are what arcade games where when they first appeared: the real videogames.

So how long should a game be? It depends on what it's trying to do.

//schmoek

http://gamesession.wordpress.com