I’m not sure where you are in life, but I think at least some of the “games suck now” (or in this case “trailers suck now”) vibe comes from our lives changing as we get older, and not just the games themselves.

When I play Ocarina of Time, it takes me back to that time in my life when I first played it, when I was in middle school and the heaviest thing on my mind was what I was going to eat for breakfast the next morning. Except for maybe Tunic[^1] modern games, even good ones, don’t evoke those emotions, and as a much older person dealing with the struggles of adulthood I can’t imagine coming back to these newer games in ten years to relive my current situation. For example, Minecraft was released after I was done with college. I was part of the early older player base that existed in Alpha and Beta, I don’t have the nostalgia for the game that a lot of zoomers probably do.

As for game announcements and the hype train, for me at least that’s also a victim of aging. When I was a kid games were a scarce luxury in the sense that I couldn’t just thoughtlessly click a button and play the game aftera ten minute download. I had to save up my allowance and and ask my parents to take me to Funco Land or Toys Я Us, and that’s assuming my mom didn’t decide I had enough games already.

I vividly remember hearing that Nintendo was releasing a Mario fighting game (which turned out to be Smash Bros). I looked forward to the release because there was a real chance I wouldn’t be able to get the game because I didn’t have the money or my parents said no, so that made it feel like something special and helped feed the hype train.

I do think games are measurably worse in some ways now though. You don’t own your games anymore, AAA budgets are skyrocketing while quality is cratering. They’re riddled with microtransactions, and purely single player experiences are rare in the AAA space. A lot of that can be mitigated by focusing on indie games though.

[^1]: I know I talk about this game a lot, but it really is the only game I’ve first played as an adult that evoked something in me other than mild amusement, and honestly it’s because I went in mostly blind and was expecting a completely different game. If I had known what the game’s deal was from the start it probably would have been just another decent game that I put down and rarely if ever play again.