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I think this may have something to do with most current developers coming to it as players. When the medium was newer developers were likelier to have other interests.
Creativity and quality art I think requires upstream culture to die on but if your upstream culture is just more of what you’re making then it becomes repetitive, derivative, and self-referential.
The creator of Zelda for instance famously based the game on exploring caves as a kid. If you spent your childhood playing games and wanting to make one you’re less likely to have interesting experiences to draw on I think external to gaming.
Nerd culture is sort of a dead end in this sense I think. It’s not rich enough for others to draw on and its participants tend to be focused exclusively on it, so it never really attains the quality of other storytelling media.
My two cents.
That was sort of my point bringing up the original writers of Marathon and my grandfather. The well they drew on for everything they did was vast. Those downstream of it have very little that they effectively draw on.
I think it's unfortunately gone beyond nerd culture. The internet, in bringing everything together, has made the whole world very much smaller, and the lifespan of unique aspects get ever shorter. I remember that when the internet was new(er), contemporary memes would call on references 30-40 years in the past (Khaaaaaaan!). Not only that, but they'd be in vogue for literal years. Now you're lucky if they call back on something 6 months old, and last even less than that. Imagine a We Are Number One meme today. It would be cringe-inducingly out of style. More than memes, media everywhere is only referential, and only to a certain point.
As you've said, it's all upstream to a very certain point. The water is stagnant.
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I think the opposite. I would guess that today, far fewer people working in videogame development are actually fans of videogames as opposed to, say, in the 90s. Certainly a lot of the suits probably aren't, and I would bet that the writing room probably has one of the lowest combined steam library volumes outside of the random consultant companies brought in to do various jobs.
I can't help but think it probably mirrors game journalism, where it seems like many of the people working in the field don't actually even like videogames and certainly aren't any good at them -- whereas back in the 90s I could definitely tell that most of the journos, certainly at the printed mags, were big gamers. And in turn, the devs were dedicated hobbyists who got into the field because they genuinely loved it.
Now, it's just a way to make money. Now, it's just a job, not a passion.
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