The title of this thread caught my eye, 'cause I've gone through basically the exact same thing. I don't think that interesting, off-the-wall games were born or died out with the Dreamcast, it's more that the Dreamcast was the last time that a first-party developer attempted to promote a
progressive culture of such games around a
core gaming audience. If you're like me, the problem is that most modern games you do find that appeal to you are buried under piles of redundant dreck, and finally finding something that speaks to you is more alienating than empowering.
On top of that, when I finally do find games that appeal to me (Child of Eden, Aquanaut's Holiday, Valkyria Chronicles, Tokyo Jungle, Echochrome, Deadly Premonition...), there's the issue of actually supporting the first-party in charge of the console. I'm in a strange place, because while I think that Sony's console offers far and beyond the most interesting library of games this generation, I just can't get over the feeling that I'd be selling myself out if I supported them.
Sony's entrance into the console race began a type of corporate culture (not that games weren't always corporate! A
type of corporate culture) that has never gelled with me. Microsoft came along and evolved this into the current state of the industry, which as a creative culture is pretty dismal. Sony and Microsoft aren't video game companies to me any more than the Apple corporation is a musical artist -- Sony has at least begun to support some interesting titles through funding or purchasing experimental developers, but it seems to me more an act of philanthropy than a legitimate act of participation in the types of games that I believe in. Hell, the original PlayStation might have more
games that appeal to me than any other system, but that has nothing to do with Sony's creativity and everything to do with their dominance.
Nintendo, on the other hand, while I wholly disapprove of their underhandedly anti-free market mentality in earlier years, seem to be the paradigm of integrity these days. The only trouble is that I... just don't care enough to buy one of their systems. I like them politically, but I've never been very moved by them creatively -- and since all the interesting third parties are elsewhere, I'm sort of at an impasse. Nintendo is the Disney of video games -- sure, there's your "Fantasia", "Lion King", or "Finding Nemo" here and there, but I wouldn't buy a Disney-exclusive VCR to play the handful of Disney movies I care about. Meanwhile, Sony is the Sony of video games. Microsoft is the Microsoft of video games. Take that as you will. At this point, I'm just having a hard time caring.
Sega was like the guys who made those
Mind's Eye animations of video games. Or maybe Sega was like
Osamu Tezuka and
Kazuo Umezu rolled into one. John and Yoko, without The Beatles. Sure, they worked in a pop culture space, so there was a corporate presence, but they all operated under unified values that favored progression through divergent expressions of a singular artistic philosophy. Everything they put out seemed entirely new, exciting, and gave you a sense that you were participating in something revolutionary through supporting them.
That is to say (at long last), that while there have been plenty of great games released since the Dreamcast, that was the last time I feel one of the major players was committed to something that I could call a "major artistic movement" within the medium without pretense. And that was fuckin' exciting. Everything else has just been games to me. Great games, sometimes, but nothing I could really get excited about and "believe in", as ridiculous as that sounds.