Hah, Craney91, I agree with you wholeheartedly! Have been addicted to gaming for years, and the games keep getting worse. And I've played the old games to death, to the point where I can't stand them any more. And yet, every time a new game comes out, I can't help but remember how it plays worse than a similar title from 10 years ago. By and large, PC gaming peaked between 1997 and 2003... The best games in practically every genre date from that period. The PES I enjoyed the most is likely PES2003. Also the PS1 PES2002. I've looked around and people still play PES2002 PSX on emus - goes to show you. With the manager games the CM/FMs from the 2004-2007 period were by far the best. Many still swear by CM01-02, but I like the visual match engine.
Like you say, as one grows up and the games keep getting worse, at some point one realizes gaming is an addiction to be fought... Same holds for pornography btw, except pornography is far worse than gaming. But that's completely off-topic.
At some point I reached the conclusion the only way to fix the problem of poor games is to make our own games. So I started making a footie game and managed to nail the ball physics (to some degree...):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYiPeB-Ncw
Then I got to AI, which is hard to do. And then I had to turn my attention to other things and pretty much stopped working on the project.
But let me tell ya - if one can get 5-10 of these fanatics floating around, these people who spend countless hours making boot models and stadium models, and gets them to make a solid SWOS-type footie game with good enough physics and a reasonable AI - if one can do that, there's money in it, and from the perspective of a nut who has played every single footie game ever - for hours and hours - a nut like you and me - there will finally be a footie game that plays the way WE want it to play.
That's the way out - or the way forward, depending on which way one looks at it, I guess. That, or dumping gaming and coming up with something better to do with life.