Kind of, capitalism works hand in hand with hierarchy and petty tyrants, the managers often have no idea what they are doing and just see insert currency here signs in the latest ‘trends’ or think that what made one game successful will work for another game.

They also often hate anything even outside of the ‘norm’ even if that would sell the game to many people who play games, such as queerness, having BIPOC protagonists or points of view etc.

Sadly, the ‘gamers’^tm are a vocal crowd, and the companies believe where most of the money comes from and they might be right. However, that’s the big lie of capitalism, that a company must have perpetual growth, especially for its investors, that they forgo making enough money to cover their costs, they want to make all the money, which is why new ideas are scrapped in favour of ‘safe’ bets which aren’t actually safe because they don’t understand what people actually want and just see insert currency here signs.

It’s like most capitalist entiprises, rotten to the core and why you’re more likely to see innovation and real success out of the indie space nowadays. Even though arguably they could and do fall into some of the same trappings, it isn’t anywhere near as bad as the massive corporations, but even a little bad is bad enough and all games studios should learn and publishers need to not be able to dictate terms, for that is surely a massive source of why games don’t do well too.