movedx parent
If we wanted to replicate the 90s, 00s, and even the 2010s era gaming experience - mostly single player, no micro-transactions, and so on - how do we do that today? Is there way to discover games that aren't trying to extract as much money from you as possible?
Buy a second hand ps3, hack it. That is the easiest way.
There are actually a fair number of indie games like that. Of course, a lot of them are only available via something like Steam, which is a networked platform that has some dubious aspects. GOG is somewhat better (e.g., you can download offline installers that are supposed to be self-contained and work even if GOG disappears). The harder part is finding out which such games are good. The best way I've found is finding communities of people who play them and recommend them to one another. Of course, those communities nowadays are often on a platform like Reddit or Discord which are themselves in the process of or ripe for enshittification. But for the games themselves, it's possible.