Early to mid 00's was peak Moore's Law. Every year left last year's computers on the curb. Graphics hardware acceleration and programmable shaders were expanding their capabilities in ungainly leaps and bounds. Every new piece of popular hardware wasn't just the marketing number going up, it was Christmas for software. You didn't need 100+ devs to compete in the big leagues. And yeah there were a lot of moody FPS games, but I can't describe the delight of first seeing a Katamari Damacy or a Portal. It was a time of untilled earth and unplucked fruit.