it sounds like you’re sleeping on indie games. I haven’t cared about AAA games in years bc of the things you mentioned, but there’s thousands of amazing and super high quality indie games out there that are made as passion projects from devs who just want people to have fun. the barrier to entry for becoming a game dev has been steadily lowering since the 80’s, almost anyone can make a game now so there’s really no reason to rely on giant game corporations as your only source
I legitimately think they just mean publishers and board shareholders. Most (read most, there are also plenty of devs with retard level hot takes on twitter about their constituents, and their clear jealousy of a better product) devs hate the features they have to implement.
This isn’t about somebody “trying to eat”. Devs are being paid by the publishers either way (until they get fired of course). Monetisation and “games as a live service” are implemented to increase profit for shareholders. Gamepublishing is already the largest entertainment industry, so this is just about adding more profits to already extreme profits.
