Quote Originally Posted by Edmond Dantes View Post
It's pretty much why I don't get people who are beholden to corporations and loyal to their products, and why I tend to be doubtful that triple-A products are actually any good (so many people seem to mistake having a large budget for being a good game).
People tend to stick with familiarity, if one company produced something or several things in the past that were good quality and well liked, it's assumed that those same attributes will exist with their future products. It's so someone doesn't have to do research every time prior to buying something, like do I have to research what the best ketchup brand is every time I need to buy more ketchup? No, even if new companies start producing ketchup or other existing ones improve theirs, I'll most likely just stick with what I know to be satisfactory rather than keep looking for alternatives.

Basically if someone liked what Nintendo previously made, or they liked an earlier game in a specific series, they'll assume they'll also like the newest releases too.

Quote Originally Posted by Edmond Dantes View Post
It depends, I think, on what one values in a game. A person who values creativity or willingness to try things will probably be more impressed by nobodies than someone who prefers refinement.

That said I think at the time of my post I was mostly thinking of games like Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork, Tetris, Doom, Myst, and Minecraft... all great games (well... Minecraft maybe not so much), all made by small teams or in some cases one person.
You can add the earliest Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts releases too, those were made by mostly small teams. Apple computers started the same way. At those early times games didn't need to sell as many copies to be profitable so people were more willing to experiment with new types of games or content/subject matter. Now that every game needs to be widely liked by as many people as possible, they're mostly generic and unmemorable. If you aim it at a specific type of audience it would probably alienate everyone else, so to play it safe they end up aiming it at everyone so nobody is really satisfied. The modern smaller studios or independent developers tend to care more about making the types of games that they personally want to play so they end up being more creative and memorable. I largely don't care about most modern games or modern movies anymore.