Making an effort at a good story shows that the developers care about the game, and giving people a reason to play the game. That or they can just admit the game exists for its own purposes, and we can get on with playing it just as happily.

But yes, a story is important to me. I've grown up playing mostly games with a story, and when a game has a story that should be the point of playing - to find out what happens next. Often I've even played bad games with stories which interest me.

A game can be very good without a good story, but most of the best games have a good story on top of the good gameplay, graphics, and so forth. It's another part of what makes a game great, not something which you can disparage at will (Well you can, but if you don't recognize the brilliant storytelling in Suikoden or Planescape: Torment then you're really missing out).