and can only hurt your sales

I think people don't know how to react to demos anymore

That's been replaced by early access, TBH

betas are treated like demos

Thats why modern games are all just lacking

theres no drive to make a good game, theres a drive to sell games

I don't disagree, but it is a rock and a hard place

If they don't sell they can't be made

I can pull rank on this 😛 i graduated my college on IT specialised in game development

heres what generally happens

"Gameplay" is developed in Game Jams

if theres some good niche for gameplay

some bigger studio picks it up and makes a game around it, and gets funding etc

or indies do it themselves

Some studios do that

ive always worked with "proof of concept" but im not sure we talking about the same thing here

Sunset Overdrive came about that way, but Spider-Man did not

but Game Jams aren't designed around games that take 7-8 or more hours to play

So although you can have a fun game for a while, most don't work in long playing

Game jams are centered around creating 5 minute funzies games

Typically, yes

then ofc theres the big cheese studios like EA who just buy up prominent small studios, and milk their cool new hip franchise

It's the "30 seconds of fun"

yes

but 30 seconds of fun doesn't translate well in full games, hence theres not many "development" for fun gameplay

People sometimes forget the part where you have to duplicate that for 20 hours

halo 2's design was "take the 30 seconds of fun from halo 1, and copy paste it"

for a whole level

yes

TBH, I'd say part of the problem is that studios _don't_ really do that anymore

but thats most of those franchise milking products

Not the AAA guys, anyway

The talk there is usually about "set pieces"

thats not "safe"

that

AAA games go for safe, which creates boring duplicates

fun is not something you can really quantify and calculate and since most AAA studios are under the thumbs of publishers run by bean counters, its a risk

only visuals to "sell" and be like "This is what kids want, go buy it now"

instead they look at whats being sold around them and what sells best and go "copy paste that"

well, fun doesn't come with a manual

people don't know what can be the new "fun" thing

thats the biggest issue in entertainment 😛

in some cases, fun isn't even the goal

i remember watching some dev blogs on Destiny's creation, and they straight up said it was designed around addiction, not fun.