As a teenager, I warned people that at a certain point, we will reach the diminishing returns of investment on graphics. I was called a “Mario playing child” by my peers.
I started to feel validated since 2016. And the “DEI-jaw” chud gamers like to whine about is also likely created by the too much faith in how much current graphics can recreate realism accurately.
Some chunk of that is from counter-boycotters and anti-trans NGOs (allegedly even some GONGOs like citizengo), who bought up a lot, then dumped them onto G2A, gifted them for cheap, etc.
They likely already have that as plan Z already, knowing that console manufacturers demanded 3D objects in the games developers made for their consoles.
GTA2 was good, it’s just games journalists obsessed with a “3D full immersion VR future”, that they felt threatened by every 2D games made once the first Voodoo cards left the factories. The reviews were not about the games, but endless whining about they losing their “fully realistic games” (past Medal of Honor, they usually envisioned a perfect recreation of Battle of Normandy) because a man made a theme park game with accurate roller coaster physics in assembly.
The 3D push was quite similar to the current AI push, but more successful. Imagine if Microsoft blocked games being released onto XBox if they don’t have a certain amount of AI generated assets and/or “live generated content”.
You don’t understand “gatekeepers”, who want to “go back to the good old days when games were a niche, made for gamers, and no corporate bullshit” (translation: “I want to turn gaming spaces a frat club for my kind”).
Gamergate was always a right-wing radicalization tool, and those who did not dismiss the chatlogs of /pol/ users collected by Zoey Quinn as fakes, knew it since day one (I wonder if “Sarah K.” might be one of those VTubers beloved by the far-right), and Steve Bannon wasn’t the first one to realize potential in radicalizing gamers, but a crappy Hungarian gamedev later turned into blogger Tamás “Tomcat” Polgár.