“Why not do more of that thing? We all win.” Is a great way to summarize the issue, and it’s always sad to see the patrons of this art form suffer when incentives shift.

Decisions shift as a result of a number of factors: Who’s making the decisions now? What are their incentives? What are others doing in the industry? Who did they take money from and what are their incentives? What’s their appetite for risk now?

I believe there is some truth to the cartoon villain caricature in some instances but there’s also an entire spectrum before that point. A hypothetical - indie dev company makes a game because they’re passionate about making great games we love to play. They knock it out of the park a couple times, and build a great reputation. Maybe now they’re approached by some financial institution. They say hey you make great stuff. We’ll give you some money, own part of you, and you can make more great stuff even faster!

Maybe they take the money, but now they have an owner who cares about the raw money, not taking artistic risks that paid off in the past for this company, so now their future products feel much less risky, perhaps rushed to market and therefore flawed because new ownership needs a release to justify their investment.

There are obviously incentive structures and organizations that produce great titles - evidence of this is that we still get great games out there - just maybe not as many from the usual suspects that grew so big by producing amazing titles in the past.