I feel this is true about much of what you see online currently. Videos that could have been an short how-to, articles that contain mostly AI generated filler. Also, if you want support on that you better join our discord.
I have genuine gratitude to people who share their in depth knowledge online using old fashion HTML.
If it is clear that the topic is Impressionist art, I would not go. If I buy the ticket to see Expressionism and get Impressionism instead, I would fell upset.
Regarding difficulty: I’ve lived through the 80’s, where difficulty was ramped up to make the game last longer, as you only had precious few kilobytes to fill with content. I’ve grown to hate difficult games.
It is your right as creator to go that way if you wish, but it is my right as player to hate your guts if I buy your game and it kills me over and over again in the first minutes.
One factor they don’t seem to consider is that they are competing for a finite resource: consumer attention.
There has never been so much content to consume: not only games, movies, series, music, books, podcasts, and even old games.
New games have to compete with and stand above all that content to justify the price.
As others have said, purchase power is down, people subscribe to more services (net, mobile, streaming music and video), all that bites into the available budget to buy games.
Bottom line: it’s getting hard to justify spending that amount on a game you don’t have time to play.