I agree with the title, "gaming today's really not that bad"... I even dare to say it is great!

Gaming is great today because:

1. "Today" you can play the best games of "yesterday" and "Today"! So yeah, in general, Today is better.

2. You can play "yesterday" games for dirty cheap, sometimes even free!

I think of it like this.

Suppose you try a new type of desert, and you fall in love with it because you have a sweet tooth, and it's a particularly sweet desert. Now suppose the maker of said desert decided to change the recipe by taking the sugar out of it and replacing it with salt. Even if it's still a "good" dish, it's not sweet anymore, and thus, no longer something you personally enjoy.

This is how I feel about the modern industry. The types of games I loved, the designs, the way they were packaged, sold, written, coded, the philosophy behind them... all of it... it's all changed. It's a different type of food. And so the thing I use to love is basically something else, and I really don't love the new thing. Doesn't mean the new thing isn't good, for many, it is. It just means that the thing I loved about the industry is no more, so I'm no longer that interested.

I'm pretty sure if I were ten years old right now, I wouldn't even be a gamer. I'd probably be into something else. If I was still a gamer, it would be retro gaming, as that's the type of "food" I'm interested in.

It's not though, you're playing them today in a different Zeitgeist. The games may be the same, you, society and competition for your time is not. Also I played everything for free back in the day, some gifted, the rest (95%) pirated. Gaming was also much more pick up and play back in the day. 

It's not that bad is accurate, I wouldn't call it great. The smaller variety and no online also made gaming a much more social pass time. Going over to friends to play together rather than chat while playing. Discuss strategies and exchange tips instead of watching you tube. Fewer choices also meant more gamers were playing the same games, more to talk about and experience together. 

The games and selection of games may be great today, gaming itself not as fun/rewarding.

I first played games in the Atari era but I REALLY became a gamer in the NES era.

There's a lot of shitty aspects of today gaming industry. The predatory anti-consumer tactics of big triple A publishers. The chasing of trends in the live service space, the shuttering of good studios in favor of Call of Duty factories. BUT....most of that is completely avoidable. I don't need to pump a single cent into the big triple A games and I've personally stayed away from the triple A space for years. Or I grab them when they are on sale for the couple triple A games I do want to play. Many indie games are like the games I grew up with. And double A games like Clair Obscur are where a lot of magic happens. I have so many games to choose from that my backlog will almost certainly outlast me. I can decide that I want a game and 10 minutes later have it installed in Steam, ready to go. I can play many of those games portably. I can play nearly every single game from my youth on that same portable system. Depending on the type of games you gravitate towards, you're eating good right now.

I've already decided I'm not getting a PS6 or the next xbox. I'm going full PC and Nintendo for the foreseeable future, and don't feel like I'll be missing much. So yeah...there's a lot of bullshit in the industry. But...just don't play that stuff. There's PLENTY for everyone to play.

I mean, yeah… that’s what I’ve been saying for the past three years lol. We are witnessing an indie boom! And dev studios are pumping out some of the biggest projects yet: Just look at the difference in Nintendo’s home console output on NS2 compared to any other system, for instance. PS5 even is keeping up with previous generations… well, maybe lagging a little bit.

As a big retrogamer I have to agree with this. I love my retro games, but I buy them to collect just as much to play them. I'm not spending $100 on an old SNES game so that I can play it. Everdrives exist. I'm spending that to own a real copy. Anyway, back in the 90's only a handful of games were worth the full $70 asking price on SNES and Genesis. Then when PS1 came along things got a little better but RPGs were the only things with cash to time ratios like modern games. You can drop $70 on something like Persona 5 and play for a hundred hours. Meanwhile a ton of fun but short games from the 90's like Rocket Knight Adventures were $70 for a couple hours of fun. And don't get me wrong. I love short games like Starfox 64. I love shmups. I love fighting games. But as a kid those games were really bad in the dollars to funtime ratio. 

Sure, agree completely. These past 5-6 years or so ive played some fantastic new games that i loved.

Its not just that, but even as someone who loves retrogaiming i think older games have never been as available as they are now, and many of the benchmark games of back in the day have had great remakes or remaster. Its just good stuff all around for the most part. 

My impression is that people usually say that the medium sucks because theyve soured on it, since as they grow up they dont feel the same wonder and excitement they did when they were kids. But thats just normal. Nothing will ever leave as more lasting impression than the things you loved, the media you consumed and the songs you heard when you were going through your formative years.

I would say that 2025 is better than this year due to hardware pricing being in a real rough period currently but in general this is absolutely true so this decade is easily going to be the best decade for video games yet. Experiencing the medium as it went through explosive advancement and growth in the 90's would've been really cool at the time but things were so much more limited and inconvenient back then. The amount of high quality games that are both free and easily accessible is one of the many huge benefits of the medium nowadays.

There is a lot to love about gaming today with some quality titles and play styles.
There are some aspects of gaming that seem pretty dire: Console and controller prices, SSD prices, CPU and GPU prices, AI Generation, microtransactions, and so on. Not to mention major studios are often only putting out 1 game every 5 or so years. Some it takes 7 or more years. And even the studios that can put games out quicker than that still have a huge release gap for certain IPs.
And not to mention retro games, consoles and such are becoming more expensive as time goes on. I know it isn't the same across the board, but some Nintendo hardware has gotten expensive, and tons of games across different platforms are very expensive.

I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not saying modern gaming doesn't have it's fair share of problems, of course, I just feel that the whole "gaming today sucks" narrative is somewhat overblown.
Every era had its drawbacks as well as it's strengths.