The golden age of gaming ended somewhere in 2005-ish, and now the vast majority of games are derivative and often worse than the originals in terms of gameplay. They sell because people like new content. They are also less about the art, and more about the money. That may have always been the case in some sense, but I know that studios used to be very proud of their achievements and had ambitious visions for their IP.
As far as I'm concerned, the gaming "industry" is basically dead. The few exceptions are games like Dank Souls and Path of Exile, which bring something new to their respective genres. I know Dark Souls is technically a sequel, but that's the version of the game that first went mainstream, and is considered the corner-stone of the franchise. The point is, those are the kinds of games that actually matter to me, everything else is content.
Rocket League is one of the "real" games, and yeah the micro-transactions are annoying but it works well for that specific game. I'm not sure how to improve the monetization to make it feel more fair to consumers, and the developers need money, so what's the alternative? Keep cranking out crappy sequels?