Coupled with that is the horrible viewpoint that the money for your game is now "wasted", which assumes that most everything we buy is kept, when in reality, most of what we buy is transient: food, energy, garments.
As you say, many new things are being created, and the solution for the most part is simple: Don't buy AAA. It has almost no appeal to me anymore, and even when I hear about some franchise I like or used to like, I just assume the worst if it's making the leap to AAA, and to be honest, that metric hasn't failed me in a while.
I'm late to the bandwagon and just bought Slay the Spire for $10. No microtransactions, no unlocks, no AAA garbage at all. Just money for fun. That's the solution. Don't play games that are just platforms to deliver psychological manipulation to extract money from you when there are games that will deliver the same basic dopamine hits for defined amounts of money, and for goodness' sake, don't pay money for things that are just platforms to psychologically manipulate you into giving them money. And often, frankly, aren't as good at the dopamine hits anyhow since they have to wrap them around manipulation.
It seems like it's really easy to avoid microtransactions, etc.
And on top of all that, there's also innovation in the underlying business models. F2P games that are morally dubious and depend on hapless whales that get addicted to your product and subsidize it for the rest of the playerbase? Sure! Single $60 or $70 purchase without DLCs? Contrary to the author's insinuation, there are plenty of games that still follow that model. Expansion packs! Monthly subscriptions! There's just no other kind of media that even comes close -- where else can you spend $50 and potentially get hundreds or even thousands of hours of entertainment?
Then again, Roblox has kids literally "working" for each other. So, what do I know?