Older people tend to note how kids, today, have no sense of how much harder things were in the early days. But it can also happen in the opposite direction: if all you’ve ever known was something “bad”, you will probably consider it “normal”, and be satisfied with it.
For instance, if you were born under a dictactorship, it’s very likely that you won’t see your lack of freedom as a problem, especially if you don’t have any contact with people in more free societies. So kids will be satisfied, while their parents or grandparents may remember a time when you could say what you thought without being arrested, for instance.
But… what does all this have to do with games? (you were probably wondering if you’d arrived at another blog by mistake…) Simple: the lack of originality in today’s games.
Most young gamers (say, under 20) probably don’t see a problem with games, these days. To them, it’s perfectly normal to be able to say “it’s like C&C” or “it’s like Counter-Strike, only with…”. To them, there are probably fewer than 10 game genres, and that’s OK. You like some, you dislike the rest.
If you’re 30 or so, however, and a gamer (not simply someone who plays a game from time to time), you’ll be bored with most of today’s games, and for a reason. You remember the early 80s.
I’ve had difficulty in explaining those times to younger people, because they seem inconceivable (much like having only 2 TV channels, I guess), imposssible. A time when there weren’t just a few defined genres, but in which almost every game was completely original? A time when games were written by a single person, at home, instead of huge teams of programmers, artists, musicians and designers? An era when games were not designed by committees, but came from the imagination of the author – and, thus, weren’t watered down, but could, instead, take risks? An age when games didn’t cost millions of dollars to make, and, so, didn’t need to be similar to other games that had already sold well? When people weren’t obsessed with 3D?
You mean, there was a time when games weren’t simply first person shooters, real time strategy, driving, sports or Tetris/Bejeweled clones? When every game could be – and usually was – completely new?
Nah. Many people, today, can’t even imagine such a thing.
And so, kids are happy buying sequels after sequels, buying the same game over and over, just with better graphics than the previous version. They’re happy, and they don’t see anything wrong with it.
But I remember. I remember the Videopac / Odyssey2, the ZX Spectrum, the C64, the Amiga, and even the NES/SNES.
But try explaining that to kids, these days. 
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