Worst of All Possible Worlds talks a lot about this as well, that so many business people in charge of making decisions, especially in the gaming universe, simply do not understand the product, the consumer, or the need for the product. Gaming CEOs don’t see anything other than “game with X feature make line go higher”, and don’t really understand WHY a specific game or specific feature is popular - and consequently, this incompetence filters down through the org. Managers tell devs to implement X even if the change is nonsensical or adds no value to the product, because word from On High is that New Feature will sell.

I work in gaming, and I can say with some confidence that, at least at the big publishers, it doesn’t actually work this way. The C-suite, in particular, isn’t talking to developers at all, and aren’t making decisions about products beyond which IPs that they have in their catalogue that they want to put a bunch of money into.

Where the problem is is in the marketing and editorial departments. Most of the big publishers have a department whose job it is is to assess whether unannounced games in development have a viable market, and how to better appeal to that market. The problem is, the people in those deparments don’t use anything but what’s trending right now to determine this, and so you get studios being told that their current game a) should be shoehorned into franchise X or Y, and b) should adopt this mechanic, tone, or aesthetic that doesn’t really fit with the core idea, amd that will be dated by the time the game launches in 2 years.

These are deeply conservative, risk-averse departments, and they gatekeep all of the major development and launch milestones.