The economics of game development is uniquely brutal. You can't just hit it out if the park once or twice and make a classic you can earn residuals from, people move on quickly and you don't earn on repeated playthroughs.
You can make a complete masterpiece, and build it cheaply - but there's no guarantee you can do it again.
That's why there was such a massive push towards live service games and MMOs, or microtransactions - it's quite literally the only way to make one creative effort valuable 1 year post release.
I don't envy folks who make games for a living and I also don't envy the founders and leadership, it just seems do brutally difficult to do well.
You can make a complete masterpiece, and build it cheaply - but there's no guarantee you can do it again.
That's why there was such a massive push towards live service games and MMOs, or microtransactions - it's quite literally the only way to make one creative effort valuable 1 year post release.
I don't envy folks who make games for a living and I also don't envy the founders and leadership, it just seems do brutally difficult to do well.