[leetcrew]

> The gaming industry is experiencing the same hyper-commercialization that the movie industry has experienced.

I agree, a lot of parallels can be drawn between modern AAA games and superhero movies. the quest to reach the largest market has resulted in products without much in the way of nuance or new ideas. this is kinda what you have to do if you're going to spend $250mm on a game or movie. even achieving wide appeal within a single large country isn't enough to reliably make that back; you have to make something appealing (or at least inoffensive) to most of the world.

at the same time, I think you are missing just how much the gaming market has expanded since 10-20 years ago. while very successful for their time, games like halflife are very niche by today's standards. there's no like-for-like comparison between cod:mw2 and a game from the early/mid 2000s.

if you expect AAA games in 2023 to scratch the same itch as they did back then, you will surely be disappointed. they aren't designed for the same audience. but by and large, more money is available to fund development for all sorts of games today. concepts that would have been a janky mod for some other games ~20 years ago are full-fledged titles of their own now. ymmv of course, but I find that when I lose the expectation for modern AAA-level graphics, there are tons of great new games available in recent years.

[joveian]

I agree, I've played a bunch of games recently due to being disabled and in the 90s and there have been many really excellent games in the past decade. While I'm sure there were some at the time, I can't remember playing any that had a particularly "artistic" feel to them in the 90s, while I've played a number recently. Games like RiME, 8doors, Hollow Knight, Little Bug, Wolfstride, Rakuen, 140, The Witness, most of Amanita's games, The Longest Road on Earth (arguably more a music video than game, but still), The Talos Principle, Haven, Arise, and Golf Club Wasteland all have a strong artistic feel to me and I enjoyed them (up through some of Amanita's are some of my favorites), and a bunch more have just a bit less distinctly artistic feel IMO (like Guacamelee, Beatbuddy, A Short Hike, or Calico, also some of my favorites). Of course, different people have different ideas what makes a game "artistic" and enjoy different types of games.

GOG still exists to avoid most single player DRM issues (some games have limited single player content that requires an internet connection) and with a better refund policy, although unfortunately they don't have good Linux support. I have an entirely offline game system and rarely have any kind of issue due to that (Zachtronics games are some of the worst since you can't see how well you did on a level without an internet connection, unless they changed that since I last tried one a few years ago). GOG has about 4500 games at this point (catalog shows a few hundred more with "hide DLC and extras" but some are miscategorized DLC), not nearly as many as Steam but still quite a few (unfortunately, some developers don't keep the GOG version up to date).