Best year in videogame history, 1997 or 1998?

Does anyone think games in the past 5 years (or even 10 to some extent) have become very stale and bland? Very few new IPs have been exciting, and those that did seemed to flop i.e. Cyberpunk, No Mans Sky, etc. Any new games I've liked have pretty much been sequels or remasters. I think the focus to make almost everything in Unity or Unreal Engine and one or two others has made a lot of games very similar to eachother in physics, design and graphics. Even the sequels that have come out most have seemed more like a graphical "wow", and then are filled with microtransactions and gimics like the newer Call Of Duty's, Need For Speed, etc. I know it's a little off topic but really haven't been excited by many new games anymore, seems like the best days of gaming have definitely came and gone, there was a good few games in 2016/2017/2018 great but since then have liked very few.

Definitely, and it's by design. For me the writing was on the wall when the very first title shown at the PS5 worldwide reveal was a port of GTA V, originally released nearly 10 years ago. Consider too, that Rockstar have made one new game since then and none are on the horizon. What a waste

F2P is the model now and to have the widest audiences, you need your game to be cross-gen. Hence two years into the PS5's lifecycle, that rule affects single player titles too. The three biggest first-party titles this year (GT, Horizon 2, God of War 2) are all available on PS4 too. There is no incentive to create a true, next-gen experience out there.

A wakeup call for me recently was watching the demo for The Callisto Protocol (crossgen, naturally) and noticing the gameplay is identical to Dead Space (2008). Nothing has really moved on and everything that felt new in the last 10 years (battle royale, roguelikes) are subsumed by the most popular existing brands and diluted. I haven't played anything that felt innovative in the AAA space since BotW and Death Stranding.

It's got to be '98 because although my favourite game of all time came out in 1997, Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency addon pack came out the 2nd year and was kind of essential towards the multiplayer meta.

Half Life with its bajillion mods was probably the other game I also played fairly routinely for 10+ years.

Shouts to Caesar III cos I got back heavy into that for a few months during lockdown playing the fan mods.

Good year for arcades KoF '98, Soul Calibur, Daytona 2, Sega Rally 2.

Re: innovation discussion I agree I think Death Stranding was the last game felt very new and refreshing to me.

Anyway I think console gaming peaked in like 2003 or sometime during the PS2 era. PC gaming peaked in 1998. Arcade I'm not sure but probably late 80's. Nowadays we have a really healthy indie scene but outside low budget fare there's a serious lack of innovation because experimentation and marketing new concepts is incredibly costly.

There's a Discord community for nearly every 90's PC game you can imagine so not only can you usually find someone to help you getting things running optimally on modern Windows there's often entire fanmade engines, contemporary mod development and somewhat active multiplayer communities even if it's just Friday nights or something.