If you enjoy good games you're no longer the demographic of 'heavily marketed action game #472103' anymore than a person who enjoys good films is the target dem

If you enjoy good games you're no longer the demographic of 'heavily marketed action game #472103' anymore than a person who enjoys good films is the target demographic of 'heavily marketed superhero film #235132345'. This isn't to say all heavily marketed games or movies are bad, but they are targeting a demographic whose primary motivation in purchasing these things has little to do with quality. Consider how mind bogglingly naive the notion of a 'preorder' actually is. And now think about how publishers view this sort of demographic. This realization is what actually made me drop my disdain for companies like EA. Gaming has gone mainstream. When this happens to anything, the optimal means of monetizing things shifts radically. When you have people that will buy 'artistic products' (as opposed to e.g. - a coffee maker) absolutely blind and will even shell out money to buy products piecemeal, it's hard to be angry about companies taking advantage of this. All this means is that you're no longer their demographic. In the movie industry this kind of sucks since there aren't thousands of amazing independent films being made. But in the games industry there are! We're undoubtedly going through a gaming golden age right now, so happily step away from the 'mainstream' and consider that the games that fit whatever craving you're having do exist, but it's entirely likely that you've never heard of them before. This is because they don't have those nice 8-9 figure marketing budgets of 'mainstream' games, but also even word of mouth is difficult simply because there are just so many great games.