There wasn't quite so much money and corporate bureaucracy back then driving the I industry like today. It's similar to the movie industry really. There's still some creative stuff going on and fun games being made but it's becoming more and more a heavily directed and profit maximizing business rather than an enterprise for hobbyists.

Still, there's some good shit that gets made. Mostly on the indie side. One benefit to the kind of standardized engines and the like is that you can get some pretty good games made by very small teams where you can see that it's one person's pet project and not some corporately derived money making machine.

Thing is the politically correct stuff doesn't sell well. Unless it's so unobtrusive nobody gives a shit. Recently they're labeling character models in games as "body type 1" or "body type 2" instead of male or female to placate the angry Tumblr people. But the joke is people spending time with a character creator in a first person single player game. Who gives a shit.

Some of the very best games out there don't let you customize your character at all. The current industry just loves cosmetics because they can sell them at piecemeal and churn out an infinite amount without bothering to actually make a new game.