Don't buy AAA games at release, and instead try out popular indie titles. They're usually a quarter of the price and some of them have become my favourite games of all time. Indie games have small teams of passionate devs who have total creative control.
AAA games will typically release a "game of the year" edition a year or so after release with twice the amount of content the original game had for half the price.
Nowadays buying games at release is doing yourself a disservice. You pay way more for way less than someone 6+ months later who gets it on sale with fixes already done
But then you'll miss out on the pre-order exclusives. How can you even play the game if you don't get that car with the special dickbutt livery? How will you defeat enemies if you don't get that special cabbage-shooting gun?
There are hundreds of awesome games available. If all you're doing is buying the few AAA bug ridden and money grabbing games that come out each year you're doing yourself a huge disservice.
Sometimes, I guess. What percentage of them ever get beyond years of early access limbo and actually end up releasing as finished games? What percentage of those actually end up either being any better than typical AAA games or offer a significant amount of play time?
Yeah, the good indie games are good, but indie games are no more likely to be especially good, or ever get finished at all, than AAA games are.
My point is that it's stupid as fuck to rightly shit on part of the industry that mostly just churns out trash while verbally jerking off over another part that's only marginally better, if it's actually any better at all.
real (my passion for gaming has slowly atrophied from childhood as capitalism has taken hold, while passion for creating anything more than a busted cash-grab has long gone)