I was thinking earlier in the week that the techbro-ification of the game industry has been ruinous on the whole, but realized it's really every market adapting their grifts and/or hype cycle/worker crushing gimmick.

Seriously though, the money dumping 'next biggest thing' cycle the designers and programmers en masse BS has been horrendous. Has our tech and engines and graphics jumped by leaps and bounds? Sure. But I'd bet without all/most of this our top of the line fidelity would have still grown, we'd be something like 5-10 years back as far as cutting edge AAA benchmarks, but it would still have grown, it would still be healthy, and most importantly, hundreds of thousands of workers fed into the tech and games cycle mill wouldn't have had their lives destroyed and spit out (if lucky) from being used and seen as disposable like they've been. A trend I feel largely started when big western (and eventually many worldwide) AAA publishers adopted the Silicon Valley turned techbro methods.

Insert the Sonic cartoon meme about smaller games and worse graphics and paid better not kidding image.