I disagree with that video title, I think GTAV is amazing and while it's beloved today, GTAIV didn't exactly launch with the most goodwill in the world y'know. Saying that, if you've been following video game news over the past decade, then yeah - it's easy to see how the gaming space is getting worse.
Whether you watch YongYea's news breakdown videos, or listen to podcasts like the old TOVG podcast with Super Bunnyhop and MattVisual, or pay attention to public reception around games that limit their availability to players for no good reason (Diablo 3, SimCity 2013, Asura's Wrath with its DLC final chapter) - you can see how games are getting more and more anti-consumer. First it was microtransactions, then it was unnecessary online-only requirements, then it was XP boosters, then it was live service gaming, now it's the nebulous and disingenuous shoehorning of NFTs and blockchain technology into video games.
Hell, even game development is becoming more hostile for people who work in that industry. Look at how studios like Visceral Games were dissolved. Look at any talented dev in the past 12 years who've joined the multi-billion dollar publishing side of gaming, folded into internal studios that make resources for "tentpole" releases like Call of Duty. Shit, not even the Kickstarter boom was great for most devs - Ken Levine has proven to be a dickhead to work with, Playtonic is barely treading water, Keiji Inafune was basically outed as a fraud, and the only people who seemed to have escaped either of those scenarios with some degree of autonomy and respect are Hideo Kojima and Koji Igarashi. Even Platinum has struggled due to their nature as an external studio that works for other companies, as well as stuff like Scalebound collapsing and The Wonderful 101 underperforming on all accounts, even on Switch.
The thing about the centralisation of game development under a single conglomerate, i.e. Microsoft buying Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard, is that all of those monetization trends initially began in the seventh generation of consoles. And what's important to note is that that's the generation where companies like EA, Activision and Ubisoft really began to ramp up that centralisation model - snapping up smaller studios to fold into a far larger game producing machine. All this stuff with Microsoft and Sony buying up other companies? It's a decades long story of a small fish getting eaten by a bigger fish being eaten by the biggest fish, before that fish is devoured whole by a megalodon. And what we view as games getting less good is one symptom of that process, of which we may have seen the logical conclusion of - short of Disney buying Microsoft, of course.
So yeah, with game development turning into an industry that makes more money than the movie industry, we saw the difference in how game developers decided to answer the question of "how do we appeal to as many people as possible and make the most money". That used to be accomplished with a distinctive artstyle and imaginative features - because that's the extent of what they could do with the technology, but also because that sweet spot between draw distance and texture resolution and Kevin Spacey being uploaded into Call of Duty afforded people a lot of creative freedom to produce visually and mechanically interesting video games. From the seventh generation on, we saw a focus on realism, particle effects and celebrity tie-ins, and the gameplay became tedious and unpleasant so you would feel incentivised to spend money for the game to skip over the tedious bullshit they programmed in.
We traded in visual design and fun gameplay for Kevin Spacey in Call of Duty, and that's a result of game development becoming centralised under a handful of corporate conglomerates using people like fleshlights to shit out as many compromised corporate products as possible.
I think that's why "indie games" became such an essential part of the gaming ecosystem when they did. Independent development represents a more pure attempt at game creation, even if it tends to get clogged up with incompetent asset flips and derivative works. For every Vroom in the Night Sky or Windscapes, you have a Night in the Woods or A Hat in Time.
I dunno. Again, I disagree with the premise of the linked video because people gave GTA4 a mountain of shit when it came out, and to this day I still think GTA5 - while compromised, especially Online - is a masterpiece and one of the pinnacles of its generation. But there certainly is a lot to say about the state of the gaming industry today, and how if you pay attention for long enough, you can see and feel the soul of video games being sucked out through its own ass.
I agree with this post, and I also LOVE GTA Vand the single player campaign is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had--not only was the campaign full of variety, a funny story and just FUN to play, the world itself was amazing.
GTA IV's campaign was not as good. I liked the story a lot, but most missions are "chase" "shoot" "dialog and driving" missions. It was still fun, but the variety is not there.
BUT....the systems were much more impressive. And the world was at least as impressive, though not as big, just as detailed even if the video technology was worse, the physics, animation and world interactivity seemed better.
The newest example on his channel is the new game that's a clone of Left for Dead compared to Left for Dead. In the over 10 year old game, The zombies are wayyyyyyyy more dynamic, have more AI routines attached, have more animations and physics attached, the environment is far more interactive, etc. Games are becoming like plastic toy stores you watch events thru....when it gen VII it seemed like we were getting close to fully interactive game worlds with it's own rules and systems.
I think this is part of the reason why BoTW was so successful. It was a return to that 7th gen style of game design of physics, world interactive, rules, etc.