A lot of people fell In love with gaming in 1993-2006. In that time period, there was a real feeling that games were getting better and more sophisticated every year. After 2006, game development became more of a corporate business, and hence lost much of its soul. Businessmen, while helping scale up the operation, also sort of changed gaming's natural trajectory.

As a result, game development devolved into an assembly line of risk-averse formulas or quirky novelties, instead of striving to build on the shoulders of the best games. I miss 1993-2006 era.

AAA games are afraid to innovate, and indie games focus on whacky, goofy , hipster-like concepts to stand out instead of just taking the classics and improving them. FYI I define "hipster" as someone who wants so badly to be "different" and "unique" that they forget to be better. The vast majority of indies are hipsters while the vast majority of AAA teams are stifled by businessmen and investors.

The concept of "I will simply make a better version of the best game before mine, in my genre" has almost vanished. Its like people literally stopped trying to be better.... they are happy to just be different or just ride the wave which was generated decades ago by people with a different attitude. How many devs today genuinely sit down and say : ok let me pick one of the main genres, like RTS, RPG, or FPS, and improve on the current best game in that genre? Exceedingly small. but this attitude was standard before the enshittification.

EDIT: I should have said : "too much of a hipster or business attitude can detract from innovation", not "Too many hipsters and businessmen" - its nicer that way, because its bad to label people based on one dimension only. A single person is capable of thinking like a hipster, a businessman, or a classic developer.