I skimmed your wall of text, and you have a lot of good points. Gaming was definitely better 10 years ago, overall. It was a more... intimate experience. The games were crafted out of passion and creativity, not influenced (as much) by marketing schemes and big dollar profits. It's also due to the integration of online. Devs feel that they can just patch their game down the road, so they release an unpolished game (ahem, Gears of War). They also realize that they can release some add on down the road for 10 bucks, instead of including it in the game disc. Sometimes, they even include the content on the disc, but you have to pay to play it. (I'm looking at you, SoulCalibur 4).

However, that is not to say the mainstream is all bad. There have been a lot of bad games, but there have been a ton of good ones that have come out in the past few years. If gaming had not gained such mainstream attention, it would not have grown to accommodate so many critically acclaimed gems.

Gaming is better in some aspects than it was before, but yeah, it is sad to see an industry so close to many of our hearts go down the mainstream market path of exploitation. At the same time, gaming is making huge steps thanks to mainstream markets and new technology. We'll just have to see what the future holds.