Ancient-Red-Dragon: Yes there are so many good games out there, but I think a counterpoint to that quoted statement would be that there are
not so many good games at there that can offer any kind of
remotely comparable experience to that which some of the very best DRM'ed games offer.
I'm not who you responded to but I'd like to reply to some of your comment, if you don't mind.
On this first point, I would say that I don't believe all experiences are necessarily worth having, even if there is no 1:1 alternative. This is a general belief of mine that would expand far, far beyond gaming. Back to gaming: It is questionable how good the AAA titles really are beyond production value and scale of some aspects. The trend in AAA gaming (as well as mainstream film, books, etc) has been to water things down for the largest possible audience ($$$). In that sense, indies
can't provide an equivalent experience to AAA, nor should they.
For the more dedicated fans of the medium, mainstream content that tries to cast a wide net so to speak tends to be lackluster or not as good as it could have been otherwise. The way that dedicated RPG fans react to the Elder Scrolls series is a good example. A dedicated RPG fan might like Skyrim well enough yet still believe it could have been vastly improved by being a deeper RPG experience rather than being the action game it essentially is. The dedicated RPG fan would not "miss" casualized aspects being turned into hardcore RPG design.
In talking about preferences, one thing that would help indie videogame creators at matching the experiences offered by the AAAs, is if a larger number of people dropped their preconceived notions of "needing" good graphics, voice-acting, etc. For example, if one gets over the need to have all dialogue voiced in an RPG, it opens the door for greater freedom in the game than is possible in a AAA game. Though I concede those aspects like graphics and voice-acting can be part of the experience, so it may boil down to picking and choosing what is most significant.
Ancient-Red-Dragon: For example, there is
simply no such thing as
any DRM-free cowboy game on the market that is even a fraction as comprehensive or deep or good as Red Dead Redemption 2 is.
Well if you ask me, Fallout: New Vegas is 1000 times the game RDR2 is (this is praise of F:NV, not meaning to diss RDR2). But I'm sure one can argue that F:NV isn't "really" a cowboy game in the way one can argue the show Breaking Bad isn't "really" a Western.
What makes RDR2 comprehensive, deep, and good to you, specifically? Ultimately, sending us to find a game to serve as an "RDR2 killer" is a bit unfair given that you are using the example of an enormous game that few studios would even have the resources to make: there isn't any other DRMed cowboy game on the market that matches it either.
This game
https://www.gog.com/en/game/gun would have come out around the same time as Red Dead Revolver (the first game in that series, unless you count "Redemption 1 and 2 as its own new series"). I would say it is comparable to RDRe, arguably better.
Outlaws (which someone else mentioned, and is available here on GOG too) is a very cool experience. I don't know if you can/care to compartmentalize like this, but do you think that in a hypothetical alternate timeline where RDR2 was made on early 90s technology, Outlaws would be a fair comparison?
The Call of Juarez games you mentioned are a good shout, though I agree with you it's not the same and furthermore I would say I don't believe they scratch the same itch something like RDR2 would.
Ancient-Red-Dragon: So, these kind of examples seem to indicate that going 100% DRM-free does indeed require gamers to sacrifice the ability to experience unique great moments in gaming, which they probably would have enjoyed very much, as regards to many first-class games that are never going to be DRM-free.
While I think you are right in some cases on that, it's worth pointing out that the principled among us are effectively what gets us any DRM-free releases at all. If people don't care about DRM and just keep buying on Scheme, et al, then it's less likely the games will ever become DRM-free let alone arrive here.
kai2: Using Rockstar's stellar AAA (Red Dead Redemption, GTA, LA Noire, etc.) output to judge DRM-free games might be a bit unfair. DRM-free is clearly disliked by most of the industry (and certainly Take 2 hates it)... and AAA games that push boundaries often aren't replicated within the DRM world for quite a long time, let alone the DRM-free world. But your point is well-taken...
Woah. I was literally just saying this in my post about it being unfair :D