Let’s see if this community still is active.
I’m not sure if it’s officially agreed upon, but I would say the release of Doom in '93 properly marked the beginning of a golden age of PC gaming. Modern homogenisation and monetisation hadn’t set in yet and over the next decade or so the PC gaming landscape would be full of innovation and passion, with a sea of classics being released in that time frame… but when did it end? Was there a specific watershed game that signalled a shift in the landscape?
This topic has been on my mind for a while, because I’ve pondered on whether there is an open niche for a community dedicated to games of this era. They’re not quite at home in Retro Gaming subs, but still old enough now that they might warrant their own corner separate from main gaming spaces.
I thought about this too but disagree that this was the turning point. It was the first sign (I can recall) of what publishers wanted games to be, but the backlash they got was harsh. They postponed the full roll-out and came at the problem from a new direction.
I think the big turning point was Farmville and shit like it on Facebook, which led to mobile games full of microtransactional shit-storms just like it once smartphones became more common.
They used mobile gaming as a way to indoctrinate the masses that it’s okay to monetize the hell out of a game, and slowly migrated this idea to PC via free-to-play games at first. Then bit by bit they took small, methodical steps toward transforming the games industry into the micro transaction hell-scape we know today.
Farmville is an excellent major milestone as well. I completely agree with your take. It releasing in 09 again kind of reinforces my thinking that the 06-09 period is sort of a good endpoint for the era I’m thinking of.