The democratization of gamedev tools was the best thing to ever happen to gaming. Yes, it also brought a sea of low hanging games, but at the same time, there is more variety and original ideas as ever.

Sure, those games may not be traditional "solve a puzzle" or "kill all the monsters", but trying to lock video games to such a narrow focus is silly. Video games are a very rich and powerful medium, and we still are discovering brand new genres, tropes and mechanics every year, most of them born out of small experimental games. Minecraft being one of them.

I played other games that were good as they came, but from about 2010-2014 Minecraft consumed a very huge chunk of my video game time because the gameplay was fresh, original, and there was so much content for what at the time was a $10-15 game license.

Ever since Notch got rich and depressed and couldn't get excited working on Minecraft anymore (it's not his fault and he has every right to move on), things started going downhill. Jeb and the boys kept it up for a while but the game lost its focus and gave way to preferring 'content' updates over much needed bugfixes and gameplay expansion. Then Microsoft came and Notch would have been a fool to turn it down, probably because he knew this trajectory was inevitable and didn't want to watch his baby die a slow death in his arms. It grew too big for him to control anymore.

I think many of us from the original MC community (it has largely been replaced by 2nd and 3rd gen users, a generally much younger demographic) saw this coming after the Microsoft deal. Most of us have already tried moving on to other games because it's just not the same anymore. What was once a pretty tightknit and niche community has been replaced by little kids with credit cards and no concept of "gameplay" or "bugfixes". They just want to play watered down Minecraftified versions of other games and more content. The soul of the game has been lost.

/rant

The way I read the comment, he's calling them uncreative.

The second one is particularly childish. Philosophical or socially relevant games are not "eating" indie games; there are still hundreds and hundreds of conventional indies coming out. You're basically saying "stop liking what I don't like."

Western AAA studios also seem to get lazy about everything somehow, like Bioware's games where all the romances are carefully diverse and bisexual, but also are just giving someone presents until they suddenly love you.

Japan is doing well with "intellectual AAA" lately (NieR, Persona 2/3/5).

Here's a similar better game from 1989: http://fools-errand.com/04-3T/index.htm

I think it's cool that Microsoft is giving Minecraft players a way to support content-creators. They aren't forcing content-creators to offer their content for a fee; free mods will continue to exist. And they certainly aren't putting base gameplay behind paywalls like some mobile games do.

[0] - https://www.google.com/search?q=best+games+released+in+2010

[1] - Which was an awesome game that you might dismiss as a ""philosophical", "artsy" highly-hyped Mario clone".

Dismissing these games just because they're not conventional "games" is insanely stupid. Video game are an insanely powerful medium for story telling, and limiting yourself to one narrow subset is just a shame.

Soma, Talos Principle, The Valley, Kona, Firewatch, To the Moon, Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture. Have all been extremely enjoyable experiences.

Really hoping for more to discover in this genre.

Anyway, there is no innovation without mistakes. If you want new kind of high quality experience, you need to accept a lot of failures will happen in the process.

All you have to say to me is a boring complaint about Limbo. Have you played through the game? It's a short, well-crafted puzzle-platformer with interesting art, animations, and sound design. It's just fine if you personally didn't like what the game did, but dismissing it as a Mario reskin is ridiculous.