> Gaming as-you-define-it is surely dying and it took maybe 15 years for microtransactions to do it in.

> [...] So designs you like are dying.

Yeah, this seems to be the case and this is really unfortunate. I'm keeping a close eye on the indie scene though, that seems to be where the real innovation is with exceptions from Nintendo and other AAA developers like From Software. Indie games are generally made with a lot more heart and soul anyways, which I personally prefer. Plus with indie/Nintendo games you generally buy the game once and then you don't buy anything again unless they make more content for it. It's perfect for my needs.

> The designs they like are not valid game designs because they aren't adherent to your design aesthetics.

I think there's room for nuance here between games they like for the game themselves (such as with Tetris Effect being a super well implemented version of Tetris with an added VR mode), games they like for the aesthetics of the games (such as games like Pokémon where a friend of mine tries to play the game to assemble a viable team of creatures they think look cool and doesn't care about anything else), or games that have suckered people in using manipulation tactics to give them just enough of a drip feed of dopamine that people end up thinking they like them (such as my subjective and personal experience with games like Fortnite, Genshin Impact and other gachapon games).

I'm not trying to say that people that like microtransactions aren't happy. I've seen people get financially ruined over goddamn FarmVille (remember when that was the big thing in gaming??) and other such games that I'm beginning to wonder if we as a society should tolerate this kind of outright manipulation. And if this means that as a player that I will have to pay a fixed amount of money for a fixed amount of content and that if I want more content I need to pay more, then that is what I will prefer and seek out. Hell, I already do this. I have at least 130 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and I bought the expansions for the game something like 20 hours into playing it because I genuinely liked the experience and wanted more. These things do exist in the modern day. I preordered Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and its expansions upon announcement (mostly because I liked Xenoblade 2 _that much_). IGN's review says it's a 150 hour game. Looks like I have my gaming diet for the next few months ironed out.

Besides, things never being updated after being released makes game preservation very easy. You can go play the day 1 unpatched Breath of the Wild game and it's mostly the same as the one we have with all the various bug fixes it got over the years. When you don't need to have live services attached to a game to play it, the ability to play the game doesn't rely on other people's servers that they can turn off at any point. If that happens with a live services game, the data on my disk is useless no matter how much I paid for it.

> Do you miss paying for access to a live game server?

I pay for the Nintendo Switch Online and PS Plus subscriptions because I do online gaming with friends on my Switch and my PlayStation. I don't have to miss it, because this is already the reality to me. Besides, if a game was genuinely enhanced in some way that was only possible with a subscription (outside of a "battle pass" which is just a FOMO gate for cosmetic items or real-world currency), I'd put my money where my mouth is. I haven't seen a game out there that offers such a thing though, so I haven't.

Maybe I really do come from a different generation of thinking about video games. It's quite sad if this means that "being almost 30 years old" means that I have a totally fundamentally different view on what I want out of video games compared to the vast majority of the market though. It'd be really sad if this was the case.