They are really trying hard to push this whole "experience" thing lately.. Why can't games just be games. :/
Because real games are exclusionary as a result of challenge and interactivity. People are also intimidated by console controllers of the past 30 years & mouse+keyboard. Challenging game design, a learning process, and complexity is "stress" to many boring people.
"experiences" appeal to the widest possible audience, and game devs are largely sellout scum.
Because actual gamers are the minority. Outnumbered by:
-Middle-aged people, zoomers and even many millennial cucks that "game" on their mobiles, or just own the latest console and only play the occasional latest highly marketed AAA shit.
-Brainwashed zoomers in particular that don't know better, because they've been fed shit for 20 years now/their entire existence
-Storyfaggot retards and graphics whores, both of which are everywhere even among those that lived the glorious 90s.
-Those that never got the true golden age experience, just stuck to one platform, or worse, one genre, and never really gamed that much. Such people have no idea what has truly been lost, never developed standards, and don't see the problem.
-Multiplayer cucks which while are largely gameplay-focused, are ultimately sucked in by repetitive mind rot, MP game design is stagnant, basic, and uncreative as fuck and the social experience is given too much emphasis. One instance in which games are actually games always, but it is a bit degenerate for my liking, filled with microtransaction and is the only form of actual pure-ish game allowed in AAA industry today, superseding monocled singleplayer experiences.
Worst of all is how much people just eat up whatever shit is shoved down their throats with multi-million or billion dollar marketing campaigns without question. Fucking idiots. As well as the evil scum that create those campaigns for their soulless golden turd-in-a-box.
Game design, gaming and gamers are dead/dying.