>>51194793>>51195095In addition to this is that gaming is no longer a niche hobby by ANY means. This isn't some hipster "everybody likes it, it's not cool anymore" statement, it's just that when gaming was mostly seen as being for kids and nerds, the big companies had a lot more leeway for being experimental and weird. For those of us who had collections of gaming magazines back then, think about the ad pages in them. Those got BIZARRE, right? But that was just where the culture was- for gaming, and for the 90s as a whole, more or less. It was a decade that thrived on people and companies being unapologetic fucking weirdos and it spawned some really creative stuff as a result. Nowadays the trend is sliding more towards being seen as "mature" as the demographic for this stuff continues to age up.
It's a bit unrelated, but one of the most visual example I can think of is McDonald's refurbishing their restaurants to do away with the bright red and yellow color schemes for their buildings and replacing it with more modern grey and brown blocky construction. I'm sure it makes sense to a committee somewhere, but it's all so much more boring now.
