And yet Fallout: London - a community-made singleplayer experience - just hit 1 million players. It feels like there's a huge mismatch between what many players want and what public game companies are chasing... they're all going after online MTX and completely discounting singleplayer because it makes less money overall.
It's pretty obvious that any creative endeavor that requires artistic influence will always be handicapped by our current economy.
As soon as all of these dev companies became large corporations, their mission changed from creating a fun, entertaining experience into producing the cheapest possible product they can get away with that will still sell and generate revenue.
Art requires risk and imperfections, but risk and imperfections are diametrically oppositional to the economic endeavor of generating the absolute most potential profit possible.