Which, in turn, is why Indie started kicking AAA's ass lately.

No investors except possibly kickstarter and the like means no financial incentive outside of "make game good".

So they make the game good.

Games became a business, that business became publicly traded, and games stopped being about fun.

Now most of a game's money comes from getting the largest investor to throw money at them, spend as little as possible, fleece everyone under the sun to pay back the investor and run off with the rest.

Boardroom checkboxes, mostly.

"Why does this game have to have X and Y?" is usually because some investors would throw more money at the CEO if it did. :/

"Softlocked" is a good term for it. I'll have to remember that and use it later. >w>

I may or may not have learned to make mob farm sin that game specifically for those slimes. >w>