You're trying to place blame on an inevitability.
Most of your post reads like you're replying to something else.
It was inevitable that the gaming industry was going to leave the toy industry.
It was inevitable that technology would make independent development easier (same with movies and music).
Not necessarily. Music is one thing, but movies are still made primarily within the studio system. You don't have the same problem where too much is flooding the market; TV almost got to that place, but that was because of the now too expensive streaming arms race.
If the storefronts weren't as permissive, a lot of these games don't exist.
It was inevitable that independent devs would make something vastly different and unique than the big budget guys.
I don't even know why you're including an (incorrect) opinion into this.
Incorrect because the indie scene is not at all breaking new ground. Roguelikes, farming sims and Metroidvanias are not more creative than the AAA sphere. The greatest indie hits are actually all lower budget spins on old AAA IP.
It was inevitable that the gaming industry would eventually have libraries as large as the book, music, and movie industries.
Again, no. These are not equivalent mediums in production or consumption.
The only thing I personally couldn't have predicted were the amount of older gamers who have entered the 2020s claiming that 'everything new is bad' painting with a wide brush of 'this is all slop' and desperately clinging to old guard AAA publishers
I can't stand this "old gamers" argument. I'm probably not as old as you think I am. In the grand scheme of things, the data shows that younger gamers are not convinced by the shit being pumped on storefronts either.
instead of pinpointing an actual big issue that we are now facing with modern releases: curation.
Yes March, I said as much in my own post.
Reviewers can't keep up, algorithms are broken, and gamers are barely keeping up. We have slowly slid back into what it was like during the wild west of the 90s, when you'd grab a random import of a PS1 Japanese game that looked interesting but had zero US/EU reviews and hoped that the game was fun. What should be happening right now is that people should be leaning into this wild west effect and actually share good games they have played (like we all used to do during the 90s and 2000s), but due to current cultural issues people would rather argue and find the worst games to discuss instead.
You're trying to draw a parallel where there is none.
Back then, there was a fraction of a fraction the number of releases published on console at all. Anything that was imported or localized in the 90s and early 2000s was probably more than worth looking into; generally, if the game was shit or banal, it would stay in Japan.
People still do recommend games. The big winners still make up the majority of the pie. For every Hollow Knight there are literally 1000 other sidescrollers choking up space on Steam. In a direct sense, the lack of curation impacts those middle of the road games the most; games like Hell Is Us.
For a AAA/HQ indie snob like me, that isn't a problem. But if you're concerned about a bunch of fly by night irrelevant studios, it's a no-win situation. Either the storefronts gatekeep again and totally box out said studios, or the very continued existence of those studios keeps the market muddied and they box themselves out.
I would go beyond that and say that the lack of curation is having a very indirect impact on the quality of the games people actually do care about, but that's a long explanation and a separate topic.
www.bloomberg.com
