I mean there are niche products and distributing channels in other industries. Why not RPGs/videogames? For example, banks give loans to small businesses all the time with no expectation that they will be the next Facebook or Google. They just want to make a return on their investment.
I'm sure I'm missing something here, but it just seems crazy that everyone has this "AAA or go home" kind of attitude. I mean it makes sense for consoles, but for PCs?
As I've said - these games tend to have LOOONG lasting sales, but they get their company on the green years after credit givers will want them to return cash which makes devs jump into another credits and we know how it ends up. Note that while Divinity:Original Sin, along with Dragon Commander paid off, many kickstarter projects didn't and I'm not only talking about Tim 3,3 millions or Peter Molyliar.
At the same time, games are more than small business. Let's pretend we want to make mid-sized game. How much money will we need(I'm assuming we're working in Western Europe or America of course)? 1M? 5? That's a lot of money, small business often costs less than 100k.
Of course - you can always find funding if your niche is particularly attractive for some "special" investors - Bohemia Interactive used to get contracts from some armies(from what I know - at least from US Army) and their games(OFP/ARMA) are toned-down versions of their military simulators with campaign attached. That's why Greeks were so butthurt when they've made photos of their military bases during ARMA 3 pre-production - if somebody ordered them to model part of Greece in their game, it means that said military simulator will have this thing modelled too. Which implies that somebody is interested in training their soldiers "how to fight in Greece".
But I don't know any RPG games that are military sims at the same time so those special investors will be hard to find.
And then there are niche publishers - Paradox it probably the best-known one and they state officially that they're not interested in AAA at all. Not even niche - Ubisoft has their "indie" section with some pretty cool stuff like Child of Light or newer Rayman games(why haven't they made full-fledged 3d sequel yet? I have no flying idea).
Consoles did it. Not to mention the fast pace that is so popular in all of media nowdays. People want everything to be fast, go quick and then jump to the next, best thing. Sadly.
Ironic given how much slower modern FPS games are compared to the old ones.
One of the turn offs of modern games is how much time they waste on bullshit. Cutscenes, walk-and-chat storytelling, long tutorials, open world travel, climbing shit, QTE sequences, collection quests. And yes, slow ass character movement is another turn off, in action games. The Japanese and FPS developers of old mastered action.
Then Halo came along and had you plodding along in your armor suit and set the pace for mainstream FPS ever since. I still enjoyed Halo overall, but others came along and must have thought "Halo has slower movement, and since Halo was a big hit, if we want our game to be a big hit we must have slower movement. Eureka!"
That doesn't negate Xarthrodox's point about attention spans, but it is ironic.
Check Turok or Turok 2 if you're at it. They were one of the first FPS games developed with consoles in mind, and they're quite slow(at the same time they offer hilariously good maze-like level design that you'll either love or hate and completely unique weaponry and this is something you won't hate, that's for sure). Halo wasn't first, the formula was here for much longer, Halo popularised it.