There’s a lot of games that do very well that don’t fall into your stereotypes.

Sure, CoD sells the best. That doesn’t mean Disco Elysium sucks though, or Citizen Sleeper, or Stardew Valley, or Sekiro, or Psychonauts 2, or Hollow Knight, or any number of great games. Games that were impossible when manufacture was monopolized by Nintendo’s cartel, or when cartridges were required and made games cost $60 in 1995.

Gaming is not immune from dialectics. It too exists in a tension between contradictions. It is both terrible, and wonderful, as it was during the golden age you are highlighting from the past, when games cost far more money and were available to far fewer people. When there was no way for one person (Stardew) or two (Hollow Knight) to be able to make and distribute an entire game without submitting themselves to subservience under a publisher.