There are a LOT of modern games released with modding capabilities, just not most of triple A games, one I can actually think of is Skyrim which still has an active modding community. CSGO, Dota 2, StarCraft 2, Arma, is other examples.
When people say "golden age" how i understand it is that they feel like it was "better" experience playing the games then, and for me it means i enjoy playing games just as much now as i did when i was 15.
Sure, game preservation sucks, nothing I have given any thought. But that is not what I am talking about, I thought we were talking about the quality of games and how much people enjoy playing said games, not the state of the industry at large, privacy, DRM, and the future of gaming.
To me it seems the "golden age" of gaming for everyone here has actually nothing to do with the games per se. I have nostalgia as well from when i was 12-18 when we did lan parties every weekend. But I actually think my golden age of gaming is still going. I have been gaming consistently through my college education and now when I am working. I have found new games (and old classics that i continue to play from time to time) and never stopped. I suspect it will end only when/if i move in together with my SO and get kids or something.
I feel in general that people are bad at keeping long friendships, and I seem very good at it (I don't know why). I have ~20 close friends that I speak to regularly that I have known for like 10 years. Many of those are people from the "golden days".
Have people that say they miss the "golden days" just not kept in touch with the friends they had at that time?
Or have they just given up on gaming because everyone else they knew stopped playing?
Yeah, not all are from, but most are from after 2000.
As the person said: the only new "type" of game they know of released the last years was Minecraft, and lists games from "early 3D" era, I assume the person is not aware of all the new genres of games created the last 20 years. The only goal with my post was to list some genres that might be unknown (some of which has been around for a long time). I hope someone reads the list and finds something new that they might like, you should try out Rocket League if you are remotely interested in games. Rocket League is an insanely hard (high skill cieling) physics based football-ish kind of game.
Simulators today are a totally different breed of games, no one that plays them now would consider them even close to what was possible to achieve 20 years ago, thats why I included them.
Edit: I meant to write Planetary Annihilation, not Total Annihilation in my original post. Which is a quite unique RTS.
Here is a list of new types of games that has come about the last couple of years that might be worth checking out if the only one you are aware if is Minecraft (this might sound snarky but I take you at face value and you might actually not have heard of these types of games before). Some of these have characteristics of old games, but often has stuff that was simply not possible 15+ years ago.
Sandboxed MMOS (EVE, no mans sky, Elite: Dangerous)
MOBA (Dota, HoTs, LoL, Smite)
Real MOBAs (WoW Arena, WC3: Warlock, Battlerite)
Battle royale games (Apex, PUBG, Fortnite, DayZ, ETF, Battlerite Royale)
Simulators (Arma, flight sims, truck driver simulator, which are now SUPER realistic)
Online Trading Card Games (Hearthstone, Magic [1])
Rocket League (I dont know any game like it nor what genre it is "sport"?)
Fast paced RTS (WarCraft, StarCraft, Total Anihilation, Red Alert)
Auto Chess (Autochess, Dota Underlords, Teamfight Tactics)
Competitive FPS (Call of Duty, Counter Strike, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch)
Casual social/arena action games (JackBoxTV, Use your words, Mario party, Overcooked, Duck Game, Gang Beasts, Speedrunners, Stick Fight, Hidden in plain sight [2])
If you are feeling old/and/or out of touch of modern gaming and coming from a perspective from the 90s, at least try these genres out. And of course games in the same genre has cross pollination and are similar in some ways, but some games play very differently, so don't dismiss a genre totally because you have tried only one game!
[1] One could argue that these are not a new type of game, but the mechanics in hearthstone is not possible in a physical TCG.
[2] Boardgame-ish types of games.
Edit: Of course I have left out a TON of games and some are actually considered quite old, these were the ones that came to mind.