Western AAA is is dying not from Scale, but from an educated Liberal managerial class that mistakes consensus for taste, messaging for character, representation decks for art direction, and therapeutic dialogue for writing. They can coordinate 6000k people across eleven studios and still cannot make a sword feel heavy, a level worth exploring, or a protagonist anyone likes.

Then the game fails and they blame toxicity, expectations, market conditions, franchise fatigue, anything but themselves.

Indies are useful camouflage because “small good, big bad” is morally comforting. It spares us from saying that many small games are also derivative sludge, while a handful of disciplined studios, large and small, still know what they are doing.

The State of Gaming is Grim. Indies offer alibis.

Competent developers offer the Reprieve.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884396&forum_id=2#50011436)