>>5437>These days, no risks are taken. Games like Myst, Myth 1 or 2 or even Planescape could never be made todayDisco Elysium, Cultist Simulator, Return of Obra Dinn, Pyre, Hades, Darkest Dungeon, Shovel Knight, Papers Please the entirety of Souls-like series etc.
>Games are so fucking expensive to make and in order to make back their money, devs are forced to pander to the most common denominatorTrue. Games industry as a wider form has degenerated, especially with the death of the mid-tier games. However 1) the indie scene is doing real well and is over time moving onto the mid-tier territory on its own, 2) an atarii crash is innevitable, as well as a reneisance that it will bring, 3) it only recently (over the past decade) went to shit like this, and arguablly it was the 00's to 10's+ that was the best years for the wider gaming industry (KotoR's, Bioshock, Dragon Age, Warcraft 3 and WoW, Return to Wolfenstein, Morrowind, Arcanum, Witcher and others), while even the early 10's to 20's had good stuff from larger companies, like aformentioned Souls games, Witcher 2 and 3, and, of course, the CRPG reneisance (though many of those are more indie).
>Gamers are Nazis, who cry and whine about idpol anytime a woman is on screenAnd do people treat then seriously? They are a joke, the lowest common denominator that you talk about.
>Nerds back then were progressive and you never heard anything close to the gamergate bullshit of today.That's just culture shit making a backswing, only tangentially related to gaming. Also, again, only really a problem since 2012ish.
>Graphics move more copies than concepts and plots are dumbed down so that every shitlib can understand themAgain, mostly true for AAA, but not so much for indie. And I don't really recall old games, outside of those well remembered monolithic cult classics, to be much different story wise. Oh, and the graphics shit was just as true back then, for instance see Quake 2, or that Deus Ex was lowkey mocked for its dogshit graphics.
As for concepts, the entire indie sphere is crawling with them, especially the games I mentioned in point one.
>Indiegames provide some refuge from the modern hell that is 21. century gaming but even things considered these days to be masterpieces like Undertale, Cave Story or Disco Elysium pale in comparison to the golden age.Didn't play Cave Story, but how do Undertale and Disco pale in comparison? And again, you are cherry picking the best of the best games from the past here.