I will say that there are positives and negatives to modern gaming. I started really getting into gaming during the NES days and have been a pretty avid gamer since. My favorite genre is narrative driven single player action/adventure games and my favorite series is Uncharted.
For my answer, I'm going to split up gaming into two eras; pre-internet and post-internet. For clarification, I'll be talking about consoles specifically for this split due to PC having internet multiplayer far earlier than consoles. I'm not going to include the likes of Sega Channel or that NES actually was built to potentially include a modem. That means pre-internet is the dawn of gaming through the PS1/Sat/N64 era. Post-internet will be PS2/Xbox/Dreamcast/GC to today. While there are other topics beyond networking to compare, this is my line in the sand.
Positives:
The best benefit in my opinion of online gaming is the ability to play with friends across vast distances. I'm still able to play with college buddies I had in 2004 that I now live more than a thousand miles from. It's pretty fantastic. Voice chat while playing online was another great benefit. During my adult life, it was basically the only form of real friendship that I had as I never really had the time to make new friends as I moved around.
Another benefit is the instant availability of digital content. Instant in that you have the ability to download it and then play it instead of having to leave the home and go to the store.
The advent of digital gaming also saves physical space in your home.
Negatives:
When online gaming first started on consoles, there was quite a bit of anonymity for gamers. Due to that, and there also being a mic packaged with every Xbox (original), everyone was given a voice. While you can point to my above positive, this is a double edged sword. Never had I heard of the many lovers my mom had than when playing Halo 2 online for the single month that I owned the Xbox. Add in players that would sing into the mic or do anything other than coordinate to successfully complete the objective... and you have an idea of how this is a negative. Sadly, the general public don't rely on the veil of anonymity to be unpleasant online anymore; they don't care if it's known they're a jerk. That, however, can branch far outside the topic of gaming.
The next double edged sword is digital content. DRM on digital content means that you don't actually own the games that you buy. You're buying a license to play the game and thus, the game, or access too it, can be removed at any time by the owner of it. You can't resell the game to someone else once board of it either. I was always scratching my head as to why a digital game was full price (often for longer than it's physical counter part) when you consider the above.
Now let's add in online "services" such as loot boxes. Thankfully, there has been mass backlash against gaming companies for doing this not just from gamers but also those that could stop them. I believe some countries full on banned games that have loot boxes which saved the rest of us.
Another really big negative for me is the constant patching. For a while, it allowed developers to be lazy as hell, release unfinished games, then patch them later. Some games were completely changed. Some were patched for the better. Often, be it the OS on the hardware or a game patch, or even both.... you go to turn on a game for 10 minutes of fun and you have a 40 minute download ahead of you. Ridiculous.
Next we have online only games. This is a huge problem for me as once the servers are shut down, you've lost access to the game. There's generally no single player. While I've enjoyed some of them such as Warhawk (PS3), those games have a definitive lifespan. This kind of meshes into my second negative but is more of a hard line.
Conclusion:
I'm sure there are more positives and negatives that I didn't list, but these are the ones that were really at the top of my mind. I personally prefer the ease of pre-internet gaming. You put in the game you want to play, you play it to your heart's content, and then move to the next. Post-internet still have great single player games that are great but have massive install sizes. I have recently bought a 4TB external drive for my PS4 so it often feels like pre-internet gaming now that I don't have to worry about install sizes.
