I think that "back in the day" people like Ken and Roberta Williams were creating truly new things, because there were no defined genres, no market analyisis etc. so they just did their thing, and creativity followed.
Now that those gaming genres have been established things go pretty much the way Mighty Midget stated. Big business isn't particularly good at just going with free-flowing creativity, so a creative medium like games suffer.
Incidentally, what was up with the ending of Dreamfall?! That has to be the most annoying and ridiculous ending to a game ever. It made me feel like the time (and money) I had put into the game was just a waste.
It felt as if Mr. Tornqvist was giving me the middle finger salute and laughing in my face whilst telling me, "Ha! Now I've got you for the infinite number of sequals that I plan to produce, which will trade off the originality and freshness of the first game, but will progressively get worse and worse as the gameplay and writting die slowly and painfully at the hand of profit margins and corporate strategy."
Yup, it irritated me
