Modern games generally have 3 problems

1) too big. Quantity is not better than quality.

2) open world, a design that works for some games, but is being forced in too many games.  When forced the entire game is bland and generic.

3) too much narrative. I don't need constant stop in playing for worthless chatters. Too many developers think they are Shakespeare... they aren't.

Games in the 90s were better.  Focused, sharp, original and actually put gameplay first.  

Interesting, I like 3 points you listed in modern games 

1) Games are now bigger, I feel it's an actual good thing. In the 80s and the 90s I often feel some games were intentionally "cheap" in terms of difficulty, having poor quality of life choices because they needed kids to fail and lose time with activities that would otherwise make the games to end even faster. And if a game is good, I don't want it to end soon. I beat Resident 3 remake, a great game, but was appalled by how short it is, it took me like 6 hours to beat, pretty much a weekend. Of all games that had the same length I would need to play like... 70 games a year. I don't have money, nor interest in playing that much, I prefer to spend some time finding a game I like and then stick with it until I'm satisfied. In this sense, I really understand the appeal of GaS and online-focused games like LOL, Genshin Impact, Final Fantasy XIV, etc. You don't have a developer saying to you and/or forcing you to stop your enjoyment, you can enjoy the game for as long the servers are up and that's wonderful. 

2) I don't feel everything is open world nowadays, this is an overstatement but yes I agree open world is more common now among AAA developers and is this really what are making the games bland and generic? I like when games make me feel free in a sense I can experiment and explore and have a different experience every time I play, sometimes I like it more than focused and clear level design. Of course this is also a grey area, for instance, Mario Odyssey isn't open world, but the level design isn't tight, in a way I can explore the maps in whatever order I feel in the moody, the dozens of hidden stars make my experience playing it an experience of discovery and exploring similar to open-world. My sweet spot is Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight or Ori, those games are technically open world 2D, in HK after I got the Mantis Claw I feel the paths I could choose were drastically increased, I could go almost everywhere granted I couldn't explore 100% of every area until unlocking some abilities. 

3) I like narratives... for me they are immersive. That's what I've always liked in JRPGs, they were full of stories. One thing I liked on gaming is the fact I could feel I'm inserted in the role playing, imagining I'm part of the party. I often keep thinking about the story and characters long after I close the game, that's something that only happens if games have a story. Games that don't have a story are okay too, but I hardly keep as emotionally invested in them as games with a story, the exception being probably simulation games like Animal Crossing, although one can argue simulation is kinda making a story already. The odds of dropping the game with the best gameplayer EVER RELEASED are for me higher than a game I'm emotionally invested in, let's say Xenoblade. Never liked the combat system, but loved the story, so I keep playing until the story was complete. 

Now thinking I bit, it's very easy to understand many of my favorite games released in the last couple of years fall into those categories too:

Zelda? Horizon? Open World 

Sqplatoon, Animal Crossing, Civ 6, Stardew Valley, Paladins? Big games that don't force you to quit until you get burned out 

TLOU 2, Detroit, Persona 5, FF7 remake, Fire Emblem Three Houses? Story heavy 

The exception would be Soulslike games which aren't exactly old either

And Metroidvanias (Hollow Knight, Ori, Metroid Dread), which aren't like an open world, but I like them for about the same reasons I like open world 

I loved Hades and Deadcells, so maybe rogue-like is my next Metroidvania, those would be INDEED an exception (although I've liked Hades story), we shall see :p 

Nintendo Power also focused on the big titles or preselected smaller titles.

My tip: use the SteamDB-search, even for Xbox-, PlayStation- and Switch-games... since almost all "commercial" indie games are also on Steam.
(itch.io has also a lot of free indie games that aren't on Steam, some of them very nice, but most of them only very short experiences.)

Now over 70,000 Steam games, almost 40,000 DLCs and some other stuff are listed, sorted by SteamDB-rating:

Now let's filter away for the content you are searching for. The most important filters if you are searching for new games are tags, type, SteamDB rating and release year.

But other filters can also help to find the games you want (f.e. if you want/need support of your native language, if you are on a budget or if you want a specific feature like "full controller support" or if you want to exclude VR games):

For example, I'm a huge fan of point&click adventures (my favorite niche genre) and I want a new good one of 2020 or newer.

So I set the type "game" (which excludes DLCs and other additional content like soundtracks), choose the tags "adventure" and "point & click" and the release years "2020", "2021" and "2022", SteamDB rating should be 70 or better:

This gives me 517 results with many games I already have or are alreeady on my wishlist.
To filter out these games, just check the boxes (the number of search results don't get adjusted by that)

Now I have the search results (of games I don't already have or wishlisted) neatly sorted by SteamDB rating. By placing the mouse cursor over the row of a game, an info box opens on the left. Especially the animated GIF is very helpful to check if you like the style of the game:

Of course you can bookmark your search settings for your next search or to send the URL to a friend: https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/?refinementList%5Btags%5D%5B0%5D=Point%20%26%20Click&refinementList%5Btags%5D%5B1%5D=Adventure&refinementList%5BappType%5D%5B0%5D=Game&refinementList%5BreleaseYear%5D%5B0%5D=2022&refinementList%5BreleaseYear%5D%5B1%5D=2021&refinementList%5BreleaseYear%5D%5B2%5D=2020&range%5BuserScore%5D=70%3A

Now you can select the games you are interested in (I prefer the middle mouse button to open them in new browser tabs).

On these pages there are A LOT of additional informations for the selected games, with the button "Store" you get to the Steam Store page and can check individual reeviews of the game:

On the Steam page of the selected game you have several options to filter reeviews for the most helpful one's:

The combination of the SteamDB-search and review filters is a mighty tool to find the games you want, much better for indie gamees than Nintendo Power ever was.

There are also FAR more people dead than living (over 100 billion people died, only ~8 billion are still living). That doesn't mean that now less people are living on earth than 20 / 50 / 100 / 200 / 500... years ago: https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/

Also your Wikipedia article seems to be focused on the defunct & bought up publishers. Lots of active publishers aren't listed.

Where are f.e. King Art, Phoenix Online Publishing, Wadjet Eye Games; Thunderful Publishing, Digerati, Nightdive Studios, TinyBuild, Wired Productions, The Irregular Corporation, Goblinz Publishing, Headup Games, WhisperGames...

https://kingart-games.com/games

http://www.postudios.com/company/projects.php

http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/

https://thunderfulgames.com/games/

https://digerati.games/games/

https://www.nightdivestudios.com/games

https://www.tinybuild.com/games

https://wiredproductions.com/games/

https://theirregularcorporation.com/games/

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/goblinz_publishing

https://headupgames.com/

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/WhisperGames

There are also wrong infos in that list.

F.e., Soedesco is marked "defunct / no longer active", but they are active: https://www.soedesco.com/news

The argument of getting lost in the releases is nothing new really and nothing limited to digital publishing. The more serious part is, that modern AAA games have millions in marketing budget to avoid exactly that fate, but it still happens. Remember Ubisofts Hyperscape? Yeah, that happens even with big budget and big marketing.

My argument is that the great games exist. Maybe you have to look for them and they aren't presented to you, but in comparison with the 90s - back then it was worse because games were so niche and hadn't really any outlet to present themself. You learned of them by friends or if you consumed niche media, like game magazines.

And yeah, the quality games exist as well.

As others have said already, that list is incomplete, but also, I don't think it's accurate to combine blue and yellow together either. If your argument is that less publishers exist today, a lot of those blue (acquired) publishers still actually exist functionally as publishers and are still actively publishing games.

At the start of the list we have 2K Games listed in blue, they are still an active publisher. Alongside 2K, Take-Two formed another publishing house with Private Division (blue) with the specific purpose of publishing indies, EA has something similar. Then we have Embracer Group, sure, they have acquired a lot but Embracer is mostly a holding company, anything that was a publisher which they acquired is still a publisher, not much has changed.

THQ Nordic, Deep Silver, Saber Interactive, Gearbox Publishing, etc. Those all still exist as publishers and have active publisher projects, though it doesn't look like Saber Interactive is listed, Deep Silver is Blue, as is Gearbox, but THQ Nordic isn't listed in blue despite technically being a subsidiary. Deep Silver and Koch Media are listed separately but Koch Media always used Deep Silver to publish everything and that remains true today.

InXile is listed as a former publisher but I honestly can't remember them ever publishing anything, Modus Games is in blue but it's still listed as a "Indie Publishing Label" Hell even Sega is listed in blue because of the merger with Sammy, Lol. So looking at just the colours is an inaccurate measurement, a lot of the blue are still publishers.

I could go on but I'd be looking over that list all day, Lol, it looks outdated overall and even the stuff it has is misleading, alongside missing some things such as Curve Digital, Versus Evil, Playtonic Friends, Dangen, Annapurna, etc. Some new ones missing too like New Tales, a new publisher created in 2022, Tencent created a new publishing label in 2021 called Level Infinite, Koch Media created a new publishing division called Prime Matter, etc.

And that's totally fine, for you. But complaining that the industry shouldn't be trying to make narrative driven games with voice acting because you don't like them, is selfish. It's not like there aren't any games telling stories in different ways, you just listed a few recent examples of games that did.

I mean, I'm with you on this too. I love Wind Waker and Hades. Both Ori games are among my all-time favorites and they both made me cry. But at the same time, I'm extremely grateful that there is a Guardians of the Galaxy game that has a great story, and it being told in a "movie-like" way is what works best for the IP.

I think the more ways in which games can tell stories, the better. Back in the 90's there were games similar in gameplay to the likes of Hades or Ori, but no way they'd have good stories. The games that had good stories were usually JRPGs or point-and-clicks, so gameplay and story were pretty much mutually exclusive. Nowadays games can tell good stories in many different ways and styles and in any genre, if you ask me we're much better off now.

An opinion can be a form of complaint, but, I guess.

Just thought when you said games were trying too hard to be Shakespeare, and that they were better in the 90's, that sounded like a complain about the gaming industry of today. Which then felt a bit weird once you praised the approach to story-telling of several commercially successful games of the last couple years.

Even if you're right, this shows how much better market is now. Before, indies needed physical distribution, the odds of them succeeding were close to noexistent. Getting global release? Forget it 

How many 90s indie games turned to be classics? I can't think any