No need for shame, but there is a more subtle dynamic in play, sort of a tragedy of the commons. Gaming is the commons. If all the games are max money, least

No need for shame, but there is a more subtle dynamic in play, sort of a tragedy of the commons. Gaming is the commons. If all the games are max money, least effort, that commons will be shallow, sort of dull. If all the companies are doing low effort works, that commons will be shallow, dull. A dull commons will sell through well, but will not tend to attract everyone it could. It is a smallish, but high profit commons. Hold that thought while I relate an experience. A product I used to manage came in colors, and standard black and white. It was observed most of the sales and money were standards, black and white, and oddly, one mint color. The rest all did sell, but in much smaller numbers. When that data was seen, sellers immediately quit buying anything but black, white and some bought that mint. Everyone sold less. And they sold less of the standards than usual. Turns out what attracts buyers to the product is a variety. Gotta have interesting colors on display. When they are there, part of the display, more buyers consider the product overall. They still tend to buy the standards either way. But they buy more more times per unit of foot traffic past the display, so to speak. Max sales actually happen when there are both a fair number of interesting colors, those colors change every so often, and that is done in tandem with the standards being available. Going back to gaming I think the parallels are obvious. Many will just pick the few big hits, but a diverse and interesting set of games is what gets them to be a greater part of culture and more people consider and stay gaming. There has got to be effort there, even though it may not directly improve revenue on a effort / title basis.