Sturgeon's Law somewhat applies here. 90% of everything is crap. We need to look at the best-in-class entries to see what's actually good. In my mind, games

Sturgeon's Law somewhat applies here. 90% of everything is crap. We need to look at the best-in-class entries to see what's actually good. In my mind, games really peaked in 1998. They were innovating back then. StarCraft and Half-Life are still near the top of their respective classes (RTS, horror-themed shooter). We also had Baldur's Gate (singlehandedly revived the PC RPG genre), Thief (basically invented stealth in first-person games), Starsiege Tribes (popularized the sort of role-based team gameplay that's so popular in multiplayer games today), and Pokemon (say what you will, it popularized the so-called "collecting" RPGs), among others -- '98 was a very good year for games. Compare 2008. Spore and Assassin's Creed are the big "original" properties here. For me, though, these don't make me think of innovative gameplay: they make me think of DRM. There are a number of other good games, but they're mostly sequels, prequels, and spinoffs.