I think it has been the change within the industry, where the creative people are vanishing, in favor for people in expensive suits calling the shots. How games became more of a money game, and how investors brought down devs more often then bad games did.
Last gen was where we started to see it I guess, with more people brought in from the outside, to help govern Publishers and Devs (people with no interrest in gaming, or wish to see it evolve). This gen it went incredibly fast to reach a point where alot of the top posisions were given to people who were focused on the money aspect, and not the pushing of creativity. And some of the statements this gen were horrible, almost reflecting game making as something akin to factory work, and not an artistic field of work.
That was what shocked me the most, a gen about how much money they could squeeze out of the consumer, how much money people could bleed from the industry itself, and how many of devs and publishers became shadows of thier former selves as a result.
Symptoms being.
Yearly incremental releases of games: (what used to be called expansion packs, now seen as full games), with little reason for evolved story or tech but soley for monetery gains, killing off IPs with oversaturation, with no wish to evolve anything.
DLC: While a good idea at the start of the gen, with mini expansion packs (or outright expansion packs). It was hard to ballance, and they still have not mastered fully. (some give moneys worth and more, most gives very little or a steep price) Alot of the DLC often felt like it was things cut from the game, for additional gain which defeated the purpose of what DLC were envisioned to be, and the worst cases it became locked content on discs you allready owned and bought. Basicly they alloed to lock portions of the game you allready bought, while legally allwoed, it was morally irrisponsible.
Stagnent games and genres: the lack of risk from alot of places began to show, there have always been copycatting, usually good aspects of one game in a genre, would be found in another, but the refusal to take much risks ment that alot of creativity were denied.
Which ofcourse leads me to something else that shocked me about as much.
How we the consumers in average care very little about our hobby, and gladly let people in the industry undermine this hobby of ours.
How there were no questions about the DLC for a very long time, and the response never became more then a meager "well I suppose it is how it is supposed to be"
How we gamers were the ones who forced the Devs and Pubs to make more safe bets, since a huge group of us did not wish to take chances buying something that did not play exactly as the other games we had, or were indeed the same exact game in a new setting. Gamers basicly killed alot of creativity by "voting with our wallet"
How we as gamers showed how ill informed we were on average, that the games hyped with huge margeting campaigns "must be the best games" while huge segments abandoned word of mouth.
How We the consumers got such a snobby attitude, effectively killing off mid tier games, for most of the gen (leaving them just on pc, and late this gen on the DL store (thank god)
How We as gamers Supported the running ips to the ground, or never voiced concerns about how ips were handled (sure we are not in charge, but we are the consumers, if consumers do not voice thier concern the industry can not know if they do something wrong.
So in short: How the industry changed in my view to something worse, heading down the path of Hollywood at a speed much faster then the movie industry burned itself out.
And how we the consumers, showed to be either mindless masses, or not caring about gaming in general.
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