In some ways, I think these two things are related. For better or worse, games have changed. You might as well sell your average AAA X360 title after you finish it. It doesn't have a lot of replay value, and it doesn't have a lot of uniqueness of gameplay. So if you DO want to play it again a year or two later, it's likely that a newer and better edition of the exact same game will be out by then.
The mass-market titles don't do a lot of experimenting. You have to get beyond that, and into niche games like some of the good mobile and independent titles to get the level of uniqueness of gameplay that was found in many of the early titles we enjoyed years ago.
Anyhow, I think my kid was one of the ones who were on your lawn, earlier. Sorry 'bout that.
This comes up from time to time and while once upon a time I mightve been making that exact arguement Ive realised in recent years that I was looking through rose tinted glasses a little. Any era of gaming has typcailly been made up of 4 or 5 "generic" and safe games (from a publishers perspective), the main differences being the style of games being done to death. Those games that are exceptions to that rule, or the best of the era are often the ones that people will look back on fondly in another 20 years all the while claiming, "new games are all similar, back when I was a lad ...... blahblahblah"
edit: I should've read what I was responding to better. Seems I missed your reference to looking beyond the big name titles to find the interesting stuff. Having said that though I do still think that there's a parallel of sorts in regards to most eras of gaming so far as the bigger more mainstream games go.
Thinking about it just now though the intimacy on the development side for smaller development teams may be in part responsible for that elusive "something" that the 8/16 bit eras and indie developers sometimes find... "developed" vs "produced" I guess you could say.
