Back in the 90's when gaming really took off for the 32 bit consoles a lot of small developers sprang up and came up with a crapload of very original games. I'm not going to pretend to know all of them but Psygnosis comes to mind.
Anyhow, later on when all of these guys got bought out and eaten up by the big fishes, I believe is when everything started to change. I think there is just too many people they're trying to please to sell big these days and they just end up pissing off just as many other guys.
I think there's plenty fun stuff out there but as many of you guys rightly pointed out so far there will always be some elitest asshole saying how its not good enough and shit cause its not this or that.