Eh, I think people have become way more critical and mostly remember the good things. Sure, some major games are a complete mess these days. But the majority of AAA games are fine at launch, if not polished.. And also a lot more complex.
Many classic (let's say pre-PS4) 3D games would be completely panned if they released in the same state now. A lot of the great classics of past generations run like total shit, at like 15-25 fps. Orcarina of time, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last of Us are some examples that would not be tolerated now by gamers. Actually, a chunk of the N64 library runs at below 20 fps and are filled with weird bugs. Not to mention licenced games. There are thousands pf god awful licensed games based on movies, comics and whatnot that barely worked, all the way from the Atari days to the PS2. And there were hugely hyped releases that ended up being a mess as well, see Daikatana, for example.
As for some personal experiences. My main online game back in the day was Socom II and the game was littered with exploits that people used (glitching through the walls, walking on the "unaccessible" rooftops), as well as a whole lot of cheaters using those game genie things. Knights of the Old Republic 2, was barely finished and hanging by threads. I had a (known) game breaking bug on Prince of Persia on the ps2 and could never finish it, with no option to fix it. And on pc it used to be way more common that a game would not work at all, without steam support forums to save you.
And let's not talk about dogshit hardware. Sega CD add ons, the Virtual Boy, Powerglove etc. All barely supported/functional products people were scammed into buying by scam commercials, by major gaming companies
I disagree that gaming has gotten worse. Looking at my childhood collection, there is a whole lot of meme worthy shit in that.