I think part of it thats being missed is that the teams of people who came together to make these games, they were much much much much much smaller.

Realmz, the example I gave, it was three people. In total. Design, marketing, management, everything. Even “big” game development companies were tiny by today’s standards.

This has two effects that I identify. The first is increasing costs. You have far more people doing less work. More overhead, more teams not directly connected to creating the thing. Because of this approach to developing games, they do cost more.

Also, games, because they are more expensive, need more financing, and thus need a broader general appeal. We got more design by committee, and less design by people building the game they personally wanted to play, which may not have broad appeal.

However, I think that becomes a flywheel of bad design/ bad implementation. The counter examples to this point are games like dwarf fortress, the original Dota, Stardew Valley, Animal Well. These are games with a practically singular creative vision for what the game should be, and they gain huge traction and followings. And the common thread, is that the people who made these games, they built the games they themselves wanted to play.