Let’s see if this community still is active.
I’m not sure if it’s officially agreed upon, but I would say the release of Doom in '93 properly marked the beginning of a golden age of PC gaming. Modern homogenisation and monetisation hadn’t set in yet and over the next decade or so the PC gaming landscape would be full of innovation and passion, with a sea of classics being released in that time frame… but when did it end? Was there a specific watershed game that signalled a shift in the landscape?
This topic has been on my mind for a while, because I’ve pondered on whether there is an open niche for a community dedicated to games of this era. They’re not quite at home in Retro Gaming subs, but still old enough now that they might warrant their own corner separate from main gaming spaces.
Personally, I think the first golden age ended with the decline of the shareware model that was used by many of the classics in the nineties.
Sure, it wasn’t the decline of shareware that ended it, but de decline of the model went hand in hand with the rising cost of development and longer development timeframes that ended the games boom of the nineties.
That’s my take at least. Might just be an old man with rose tinted (shareware) glasses.