First, the customers are the actual king-makers. In the end, if something isn't what lots of people want, lots of people won't buy it. In any given moment, what

First, the customers are the actual king-makers. In the end, if something isn't what lots of people want, lots of people won't buy it. In any given moment, what people want is something that is out of anyone's control (and this is true whether you're talking about a single developer or a giant group of them banded together in a corporation).^ This is broader than just stuff that you buy. Introspect for a moment, right now: could someone get you to want to listen to music you detest, without forcing you by planting electrodes in your brain? Or to any music at all, if you aren't in the mood? What about our romantic and sexual lives? You can't control who or what someone else wants, nor should you. Remember that games compete with a whole world of stuff out there that's not on your phone or computer or game console. When people aren't playing video games, it's because they're doing something else that they chose to do, such as going to work, out to a restaurant, on a hike, for a drive, kayaking, listening to a recorded lecture, making dinner at home, etc. For all of recorded history, up until the last 35 years or so, people didn't play video games. You're not up against a company that's trying to keep you down: you're up against the actual desires of every single person that would never buy your product, even if they were somehow made fully aware of its existence. It might be hard for you to imagine that the game you work on will never be important to a huge number of people, but you have to get over it. No one owes anyone else a living, no matter who they are, or how much they need it. Anything less means enslaving at least one person, to some degree, to the will of another. ^In the long term, what someone wants ultimately stems from ideas a person chooses to hold, which they apply in the course of dealing with the environment around them.