Off topic: How are games failing you?

[Omnirizon]

I've actually read that from the big game company's point of view, developing a game system, as basic as that seems, is more costly than developing state of the art graphics.

they already have the gfx staff, but developing and tuning a game system is a risk. unlike rogues which can innovate because the game is never 'finished', proprietary games must release a more or less finished product. they can't be gambling with experimental game systems. for this reason they just take something off the shelf and roll with it. it's kinda funny how they sell "used the D20 system!", like its a good thing to be using a highly simplified system that can be used with pen&paper. as long as they add lens flare people don't care. or at least they use to not care, gamers today are getting fed up with the same old drivel.

i think DIY and hobbyist games are going to become more popular. dynamic languages like Python facilitate rapid prototyping and allow relatively quick testing. it isn't even infeasible to do quick buildups for testing and then rewrite computationally intensive portions in a faster running language.