I’m just hoping for some good games moving forward that aren’t trying to milk us for everything we have with slop we don’t want.

... There is plenty of that?

The thing to understand is that influencers pretty much always fall back to the "us vs them" mentality. We could see it with early youtube where they accused magazines/websites of all being corrupt and getting paid for reviews (never forget Jon "It's about ethics in games journalism" Bain...). And we saw it in twitch when they instead said it was the youtubers and their sponsor deals who were doing the same. And we saw a huge rise in "I need to watch tiktok because that informs me about things that mainstream outlets don't want me to hear!"

Some outlets go political. Most are aggressively "apolitical" and all that entails. But that means that "the game devs are trying to screw you over" is a solid talking point. It is why everyone and their mother needs to say they hate live service games (with the added bonus of avoiding any chance of having a regular game they arer expected to stream) and so forth.

But if you actually PLAY games? It is still a golden age where basically every sicko gets their fetish in game form (and Microprose and Kitfox are apparently the sleazy club I slink off to...). We are in for a pretty bad drought after the past two years or so of funding drying up and studios being gutted. But if you actually are looking you are gonna find a LOT of games that know what you want.

I'll also add on that "game devs want to ruin gaming" is a great excuse to play "retro" games. Which drastically reduce operating costs for the part timers because... even IF they are showing you their console and cartridge, you can bet your bottom dollar they are running an emulator with a game they grabbed from their local internet library.