You can't really paint things with a broad brush although more people 25-30ish and over would have grown up in a time where the PC market was a lot more diverse than it is today -- usually just another iteration of an FPS or an MMO. Obviously there are people younger who have been exposed to those games so you still have a small market but in general people just want to be fed the same shoot-em-up crap without much originality. Most people don't even care about a single player campaign. There's essentially a whole generation that grew up on stuff like that so that is all they expect/want out of gaming.
As far as bugs and such that has always plagued the gaming industry as they rushed to hit deadlines. Not so much a bug but I remembered having to exchange Monkey Island 2 three times before I got a copy with working disks.
Spanking? Not sure what age you were spanked but minor corporeal punishment of children, e.g., spanking and scolding has been pretty taboo since the mid to late 90's. I guess it depends on the family. In the general sense, though, I agree. Each successive generation gets exponentially horrible at raising children/letting them get away with whatever. I'm 33 and I look at some of the people I went to college and law school with and I couldn't fathom them raising children of their own... yet sure enough they are... badly. It's just going to get worse and worse. Look at the teenagers of today -- can you imagine them as parents? A lot of it has to do with us drowning in a sea of technology... hell I didn't even have the internet growing up and now prepubescents have access to facebook, myspace, etc.
Let's just say I have more of a Bladerunner perception of the future and not a Star Trek one. I for one won't be too disappointed that I won't be around to see it.

It's not to say it's unique to this current younger generation. The past ones have had more than their fair share of slack-jawed idiots its just that the problem is the growth is alarmingly exponential with no end in sight.
South Park debuted when I was in my senior year of college and I can't imagine how its still running. It was funny for a year or so but then the material just got old and tired but if I'm Trey Parker and Matt Stone I'd be more than happy to keep cashing the checks.

Quite true although I'd place the figure at about 99% but then I'm the picky sort. The game industry has always been a case of panning for gold in a sewer (You had to be damned careful when you found a nugget), before the wide use of the internet and its ability to deploy patches, games had to be re-coded and checked to a massive extent and for the most part they never got enough checking and bugs were rampant.
These days bugs are still rampant because of the pressure to rush things out the door and the fact that patches often break as many things as they fix (OFP springs instantly to mind as does gears of war 2's multiiplayer).
The main difference these days is that games are becoming a primary entertainment medium and are therefore commanding vastly higher budgets for development and advertising. Frankly it's unfair to even compare manipulation of gamers these days to gamers from the birth of the medium simply because there is no comparison, the advertising of the time was limited to print and a select few tv ads. Microsoft used to run ads like these, cross promotional stuff piggybacking on an andorsement of another company. These days they do blanket advertising of new stuff because the market is bigger and they have more potential customers to reach.
Are people these days more stupid that people from the 80s? Not really, there's just more opportunity for them to demonstrate their stupidity. In the 80s they only had their local club scene to show off their cocaine fuelled neon pink lycra covered moves, these days they have blogs, youtube and twitter which lets them have an audience not of dozens or hundreds but of millions who think "what a dickhead"

WHAT!!!?? DX
No way, I can't believe it... I can't really believe that people have fallen that far! :'-(
Next you'll be telling me that people hate M.A.S.H.!

Nah, I have a few friends who have seen MASH, but most haven't even heard of it, and if they have, theyve never seen it. I've seen the whole show like 4 times :P

1977 for me.
My first memories of video games are console Pong and Atari. Then of the arcade Pac-Man, Elevator Action, and Dig Dug. My first PC game experiences were Space Wars, Lunar Lander, Dragon Coin, and Wizards Castle. After that it was an endless parade of noteworthy titles like, King's Quest, Space Quest, DOOM, C&C, and many others. Sure I've owned different console systems over the years. They all have their good games for that time.
The turning point and the downfall of everything is when gaming lost it's creative edge. They no longer have the balls to lay it all on the line because they are afraid of loosing everything. I can understand that but think about it this way. If you went in and pitched an idea like Populous to the big wigs they would laugh their asses off. So that's why alot of developers tend to go indie. Which isn't a bad arrangement but you tend to go un-noticed because of 2K or EA is busy slamming the market with Bloody GUNS 666. There's no room for you except for the people looking for you.
Personally I like the older PC games. It's like being in Ali Baba's treasure cave. There are so many great games it's unbelievable. I buy an indie or old Nintendo game every once in a while. Once my friend asked me, how can you buy those old crap games? I said how could you buy the new ones? You spend 50 to 60 bucks on a title that you might play for an hour or 2 then get bored. I spend 10 to 30 bucks on a game I play for a week and want to play again. The next week he was texting me that he got a Nintendo and some games for it.
As you can see the people that are around 30 know the games they buy are garbage. The younger group are new to it all and will buy anything because it's new to them. I hope the generations to come hold the days that I use to think would never end, in the utmost respect.

The "modern gamers" you talk about are pretty much the facebook generation... and I don't think the problem is that they are "easily manipulated", I think it's that they accept things that we never used to. They have volunteered to throw away their privacy and rights with facebook public profiles, cellphone contracts, and modern software EULAs and DRM.
Their logic when it comes to software actually makes plenty of sense: if I like the game, and it's worth $60 to me, and it runs... what's the problem?
If the industry continues the way it's going... we'll have blockbuster games coming out with high production values, incredible graphics, and loads of achievements/unlockables to reward those who play the game... but we'll pay through the nose and have really restrictive DRM.
Is this bad for the modern gamer? Probably not. I expect they'll look forward to that.
I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that we are now, literally "old school" gamers. My children's friends will probably laugh at me for still reading contracts and continuing to keep copies of my data on local storage.
Let's face it:
* If millions of people enjoyed Fallout 3, and if it got higher critical acclaim than the originals, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
* If 90% of the people playing MW2 are new gamers and don't even understand what a dedicated server is, isn't it a good thing for them that they don't have to worry about the technicalities?
* If Bad Company 2 and Borderlands were both buggier than they should have been, but over time they are patched, balanced, and new content is continually released... isn't this a fair trade-off?
Thankfully, there are plenty of development studios, distributors (GOG, Stardock*), and independent studios that are still looking out for us.
(*) Say what you like, but the Gamer's bill of rights gives me hope.

You make me sad, I am the last generation and just noticed it. Oh well.
By the way love the Gamers Bill of Rights, Stardock sent me one in my email when I got my first game on Impulse a few years ago and that's the reason I buy games on GOG first, Impulse second, Gamersgate tertiary and Steam as a dead last alternative anymore. That's the order how well those companies keep with gamers rights in my opinion.
Snap just noticed something. Ignorance is bliss so should I just get a 360 and see how that works out? I'll report to you guys in another thread if I do, see how much easier it is. Maybe a PS3 because I want Gran Turismo 5. Consoles may be easy for gamers on purpose, companies want that.

Same here. The 90's was the best decade for gaming imo, had much better music,movies and tv than the 00's. I also like the people more.

Once you get over the whole "new == bad" mentality, xbox 360 doesn't suck as hard as you'd think it does

10/10!

I like Q3A and UT. MW2 looks like a RPG to me. ;)

A niche product going mainstream, masses involved, product degrades... news at 11.

I am 16 (1994), I'd say many of the people I know at school are like that. Most of them have buy every sequel or game with "guns" in it. They also buy yearly football updates (I wait for them to be reduced to 99p after 2 years) If it's more than 1 year old, it's ancient, and they must have new update. I love retro games and I hate stuff like DRM. I have not bought a Call of Duty game, and probably never will (fun to play on spilt-screen mode, but since everyone else has it...).
I'd agree though with the fact that the majority of anything is crap. Goes with books, games, TV, movies and music. When people say 'x' medium is becoming crappy, it's generally the popular aspect they are talking about. You generally have to search for the gems. Like Sam and Max series, Zeno Clash and Braid.
One thing that companies need to do is make some more original IPs. It's becoming a really big trend (Capcom espically) to release games that have nothing to do with the originals and paste a big name on them.